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 Internationally renowned symphonic/gothic, female fronted metallers Epica, featuring Ariën van Weesenbeek behind the drum set, have just released a brand new album called 'Design Your Universe'. Exclusively for Drummerszone.com Ariën explains some of the drum parts, shares tips & tricks to warm up, goes from a berserker metal style to samba on his drum kit and reveals some other talents as well. Watch the unique video footage below:
Part 1: Introduction
Epica drummer Ariën van Weesenbeek explains some of the drum parts of brand new album 'Design Your Universe', how he came up with them, what he found difficult, why he plays the way he plays, etc
Part 2: Warming up
Ariën shows how he warms up prior to a show without having a drum kit around to play on. First he starts with his legs and feet by tapping on the floor with accents on every count. He's not emphasising the accents, just trying to maintain a flow. This is also helping to stay in the same tempo plus it keeps the muscles going and the blood flowing. Next he's alternating 16th notes on hands and feet.
Part 3: Resign to Surrender
The opening track of the new album, a song called Resign to Surrender. Guitarist and grunter Mark Jansen, also main composer of the band, came up with the first part which was quite difficult for Ariën. He explains why. He also talks about the bombastic fills that still needed to breath and include some triplet fills.
Part 4: Martyr of the Free Word
This track is "one of the album highlights", according to Ariën. It features really heavy drum parts, almost thrash or even death metal. Ariën came up with most drum parts and also composed some of the guitar riffs. Probably the heaviest Epica song ever.
Part 5: Kingdom of Heaven
The longest song on the new album, clocking in over 13 minutes, is Kingdom of Heaven. It starts with a Fear Factory type of metal groove. After some blast beats it changes from tempo and becomes almost danceable. The middle part features a weird melody line on guitar which required an appropriate odd part on drums. Also featuring a crazy Dimmu Borgir kind of fill with amazing tom rolls.
Part 6: The samba beat explained
Ariën explaining the samba beat in Kingdom of Heaven. It's a combination of accents on the toms and snare plus ghost notes on cymbals, coming from Ariën's stint in a marching band back in the days. The same goes for a lot of his fills which he builds up by starting on the snare drum.
Part 7: Ariën doing Cartman
Only a few people know that Ariën has the habit to imitate voices from films and tv series, so Mark suggested Ariën should also contribute to the vocal parts. Hence the drummer did some grunts plus spoken word parts on the new album, mainly in Kingdom of Heaven. It's something new for Epica - and for Ariën as well - but it turned out well.
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