Let’s celebrate ! This morning, Epica released the 10th anniversary remastered version of one of their best albums, Design Your Universe (called the Gold Edition), as well as a new EP, The Acoustic Universe. The new acoustic songs sound so good !

And to spoil us even more, a new music video was uploaded to the band’s YouTube channel : Martyr of the Free Word, created by Stefan Heilemann (who also designed the DIY, RFTI, TQE and THP album covers).

Tonight, the band will play the first show of the DYU 10th anniversary tour in Oberhausen (Germany) ! Who else is excited ?

To celebrate this very special day, I updated a lot of pages on the site (I added a lot of videos in our media center, as well as new pages in the career and press sections). A huge gallery update is also coming soon (of course I will add pictures from the DYU 10th anniversary shows as soon as I can find some).

According to an interview for Heavy TV, Epica are planning to release their next studio album in late 2020 !

Isaac said there will also 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. Mark previously said this edition will be called “Gold edition”. The album was remixed, remastered and this edition will have a new booklet based on the old booklet but with different colours. The band will play “80% at least”, “the vast majority” of the DYU tracks on tour next fall, but they probably won’t play the album from beginning to end because they want to surprise the audience.

Last year, Epica won a competition organized by The Metropole Orkest, a world-renowned Dutch orchestra, and recorded a rendition of Beyond the Matrix with them, featuring Arjen Lucassen from Ayreon.

The song will be released as a limited-edition vinyl and digital download on October 26th. Visit the official webshop to pre-order the vinyl and bundles.