Dutch symphonic metallers EPICA are planning to release their next studio album in late 2020.

During an interview with Heavy TV at last month’s Download festival, guitarist Isaac Delahaye revealed that he “already started writing some stuff” for the follow-up to 2016’s “The Holographic Principle”.

Speaking about the EPICA songwriting process, keyboardist Coen Janssen said (see video below): “We start out separately. Everybody gathers their ideas, records it at their own studio, and then we send it to each other. We eventually get together and try out how it sounds and how it actually feels when you play it, which is, I think, a really important thing. Because if you throw it out to an audience, they have to feel it. If you only just record it at your home studio, you don’t know if it will work in a live environment. So that’s basically how we do it.”

EPICA will spend this fall playing a select number of exclusive shows in support of the 10th anniversary of its album “Design Your Universe”. The disc holds a special place in the hearts of EPICA‘s fans and includes such fan favorites as “Kingdom Of Heaven” and “Design Your Universe”.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of “Design Your Universe”, the band will return to a number of venues they played while touring on the album back in 2009-2010.

According to Delahaye, there will be a new version of “Design Your Universe” coming out, featuring “some extras,” including a “bonus CD” with “five acoustic” renditions of songs from the original album. “And we’re gonna do a re-release ‘Design Your Universe’ tour, or however it’s called, so we’re gonna play some shows in Europe and South America,” he said. “It’s just another tour to celebrate 10 years of that album… So that’s something to look forward. I’m really looking forward to that. ‘Cause it’s also the first album I — when I joined the band, that was the album we worked on, so, for me, it’s a special album as well.”

November 2019 will see the release of “The Essence Of Epica”, a lavishly designed and fully illustrated, high-quality hardback which tells the story of EPICA in bandmembers’ own words. The book is available in two distinct editions: the Classic is a 208-page, hardback with foil detailing, filled with over 200 images; the Signature hardback is signed by the band and comes in a deluxe clamshell box with three exclusive, original art prints created by Stefan Heilemann.

Fonte: Blabbermouth.net