Epica

Epica
Current Epica Members
Background information
Origin	The Netherlands
Genre(s)	Symphonic Metal that's not Nightwish
Members
Mark Jansen Simone Simons Coen Janssen Isaac Delahye Rob van der Loo
Former members
Ad Slutman St. Yves Some other random people

Epica is a Symphonic Metal Band that has kept the same singer - Ariel - for the majority of its existence. It has thus has avoided both the international attention received by Nightwish and the international apathy received by Sirenia, however they have gained recent public interest due to the singer's choice in make-up.

Occasionally, Epica act as a band. However, their usual exploits include hunting for murderous nuns, burning bibles, sacking The Vatican for rare texts and torturing priests for information.

Ariel has a personal side-project, known as Aristyle, where she frequently makes posts about crap nobody cares about. Her recent adventures include buying lipstick from a drugstore, eating a home cooked dinner (likely containing seaweed and a side of fish), and buying shitty products which don't work.

Biography

During the summer of 1992, a young Roman viking by the name of Mark Jansen was having a fine ol' time until a vicious gang of Roman Catholic Nuns showed up. Young Mark suffered through the burning of his village as a child. The nuns brutally raped, tortured and murdered his family and friends before his young, delicate eyes. The experience instilled in him an intense paranoia of all things religious, particularly Catholic, and as a young man he decided to commit suicide.

To his own despair - and the distress of anyone who has heard his music - this attempt failed. Unable to adjust to the new world easily, he embarked on his quest to find the gang of nuns.

Mark decided to join a metal band as a guise to track down the nuns for revenge. Unfortunately, the band he toured with, After Forever, grew annoyed with Jansen's habits, particularly the multitude of surveillance cameras he set up around every venue they played at and the way he would jump in fright whenever anyone within earshot mentioned the word "religion."

Finally, Jansen and After Forever parted ways once he realized that they would never provide the cover needed to stalk out his sworn enemies, the nun gang. He formed his own band, Sahara Dust, which initially did very poorly until Jansen discovered the newly-divorced Ariel, singing wistfully to the dykes in the Netherlands. Jansen fell in love with the red-haired songstress and her voice from first sight, and fell on his knees, begging her to join his band. Ariel was overjoyed to be receiving attention from a metal guitarist - as a sure sign of her exceedingly high standards - and quickly agreed to sing in Sahara Dust.

Due to poor commercial and critical reception, the name was soon after changed to Epica, hoping that nobody would determine they were the exact same band. Ariel herself adopted the stage name "Simone Simons" and began enchanting audiences with her long red hair and magnificent voice.

Lineup changes

Many lineup changes occurred throughout the years, the most notable being the departure of Epica's second guitarist, Ad "Slutty" Slutman. Ad's promiscuous lifestyle was ill suited to Jansen's undercover nun-gang hunting operation, particularly when Ad had a steamy roleplaying session in the tour bus with a woman dressed as a nun. Jansen unexpectedly got onto the bus, saw the woman stripping her nun garb for Ad, and immediately shrieked and attacked the poor girl, bludgeoning her with his guitar until she went into a coma. By the time Ad explained that the girl was just role-playing for him, Jansen had already made up his mind to kick Ad out after the next album release. Ad left the following year under the condition that they release a press announcement calling the departure a "mutual agreement." The girl, whose name was Sabine Dunser, ended up dying and her band, Elis, announced her death to be caused by a cerebral hemorrhage. Subsequently they released an album to memorialize her, called Griefshire.

Upon Ad's departure, Mark Jansen began stalking potential new guitarists for Epica. He googled "band names with anti-religious undertones" and came across God Dethroned, with their guitarist Isaac Delahye. Isaac too had experienced cruelty at the hands of the vicious nun gang (they had killed and eaten his parakeet as a child) so he was enthusiastic about Jansen's undercover mission. Subsequently, Epica released a euphoric album as a result of many nights of questionable substances and beverages, entitled "Design Your Universe." The album claimed that people could manipulate matter through sheer will and thought, and was promptly made a joke among college chemistry students, although was a success amongst Scientologists. This album was apparently based on the research work of philosophers who actually believe in this tripe. While the sobriety and mental state of these so-called undergraduates has been questioned, they have been determined to be “clear” by trained auditors.

Current activity

Epica's latest release, Requiem For The Indifferent To My Repetitive Lyrical Themes, was an enormous success, but further proof that Jansen still hasn't found and destroyed the vicious nun gang, nor gained substantial lyric writing abilities.

Epica are currently traveling on the worldwide Repetitive Lyrics for the Indifferent tour, in which they are missing most parts of the world. They are soon to play at the 100th year anniversary show of Mark's nun attack, known as Retroshit, in which they are sure to forget about the prospect of filming it to release on DVD and as a result will fail to make piles of Money.

Themes in Epica songs

All the songs that fans have correctly translated from Latin appear to be about the horrors of religion. The Vatican is attempting to translate the remaining songs but keep mixing up the ablative and accusative cases of the nouns.

Band members

Current Members:

• Ariel (Aka Simone Simons) (Vocals)
• Mark Jansen (Guitars, Growls)
• Isaac Delahye (Guitars, Emotional Support for Jansen)
• Coen Janssen (Keyboards, Mandatory Cool Hipster Glasses)
• Arien van Weesenbeek (Drums, Surveillance Camera Tech)
• Rob van der Loo (Bass, Artillery)

Former Members:

• Ad Slutman (Guitars)
• St. Yves (Non-Religious Cultural Figure, Bass)

Discography

• The Phantom Menace (Sued for copyright, later changed to "The Phantom Agony") (2003)
• Consign to Obvious Lyrical Themes (2005)
• The Divine Conspiracy: Why I Have Nightmares About Nuns (2007)
• Design Your Universe And Give Me Whatever You're Smoking (2009)
• Requiem For The Indifferent To My Repetitive Lyrical Themes (2012)