Mark Jansen

Mark Jansen — born in the Netherlands in 1978 — is Epica's guitarist, guttural vocalist, founder and principal composer. Before Epica he was one of the founders of After Forever, the Dutch band that helped establish European symphonic metal. He left in 2002 over disagreements about the group's direction and put Epica together straight after — a decision that resulted in two reference bands in the same country and the same subgenre, sprung from the same point of origin. His musical conception starts from a contrast: lyric soprano and guttural growl in the same track, over arrangements employing real orchestra and choir rather than synthesizers. Jansen is the low half of that equation — the growls are his — and he also writes the lyrics. The texts are what distinguishes Epica from other bands of the genre. Instead of fantasy, they deal with organised religion, theory of knowledge, quantum physics, political manipulation and environmental crisis, often on concept albums that develop a thesis across the whole record. It is symphonic metal with essayistic ambition, and fidelity to that project over more than two decades is what gives the catalogue its coherence. He also maintains MaYaN, a symphonic death metal project whose line-up partly overlaps with Epica's.