Epica Releases New Album ‘The Holographic Principle’

Symphonic metal band Epica released their latest studio album titled The Holographic Principle yesterday, September 30. The album was released via heavy metal label Nuclear Blast.

The album had been heavily advertised on the band’s official Facebook, where they announced the early release of several tracks from the album as well as posting a 3-part documentary about the making of the CD. Epica had mentioned in their documentaries that this album was going to be their best one yet, and it may not have been an exaggeration. The album itself starts out with the expected prelude track to start off as it leads into the rest of the album. The songs feature fast paced vocalizations backing up singer Simone Simons’ own operatic style, with intense guitar, drums, and orchestra to fill any empty space. While most of the album feels tightly wound and constantly moving forward, it makes sure to slow down around the middle with “Once Upon a Nightmare,” a track that has over two minutes of quiet instrumental before Simons softly comes in.

The band had advertised that this album would be an evolved form of their last album, The Quantum Enigma, and it is easy to tell that this indeed is a progression from that CD. It is still remarkably different, and also isn’t afraid to have fun. There are several acoustic-style tracks at the end, most all of them with connected to but with different names than their original counterparts from the album. Some of them are traditionally acoustic, while some of them take a different style to the song, occasionally changing the lyrics to fit the new style. “Beyond the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” counterpart to “Beyond the Matrix,” is played to a jazzy tune, while “The Funky Algorithm,” original song being “The Cosmic Algorithm,” sounds like it belongs at a disco party.

The Holographic Principle is available through the Nuclear Blast website, Amazon, and iTunes.

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