Rob van der Loo — born in the Netherlands in 1979 — has been Epica's bassist since 2012, having replaced Yves Huts. His function in the repertoire is among the hardest to notice and the most necessary. Epica builds its arrangements on simultaneous layers — orchestra, choir, symphonic keyboards, two guitars, lyric soprano and guttural vocals — and the sonic spectrum is practically occupied before the bass comes in. It falls to him to hold the harmonic foundation beneath all that mass, keeping an audible reference in tracks passing through multiple changes of tempo and orchestral sections. It is work noticed only when it fails: without that ground, the band's dense arrangements would lose their floor and sound loose. He came from Delain, another Dutch symphonic metal band, and from Sun Caged, a progressive metal project — a path combining exactly the two competences Epica demands, support within a dense arrangement and the reading of complex structure. He has recorded from The Quantum Enigma (2014) onwards, part of the most stable line-up in the group's history.
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