Dutch symphonic rockers EPICA have checked in with the following update:

"With pain in our hearts we have to announce that the Epica shows in Madrid (today, October 31st) and Lisbon (Sunday, November 1st) are cancelled. Simone has no voice and the specialised doctor told her to be silent for the next two days. Tickets of these shows remain valid and we're working on the new dates for these two shows (probably March 2010). We're really sorry but what can you do about fate. The doctor told as well that the chance is big that Simone's voice will get better soon so that the concerts in France and Z7 Switserland will take place. We'll keep you updated."

Remaining dates on Epica's European tour are as follows:

November

3 - Bikini - Toulouse, France
4 - Transbordeur - Lyon, France
5 - Z7 - Pratteln, Switzerland
6 - Elysee Montmartre - Paris, France
7 - Elysee Montmartre - Paris, France

As previously reported, Epica guitarist / founder Mark Jansen recently spoke with BW&BK; scribe Carl Begai about the band's new album, Design Your Universe. An excerpt from the story is available below:

Design Your Universe doesn’t start on an inspirational note. If anything the orchestral intro is downright boring, a predictable soundbyte that could have been cut and pasted from any of Epica’s previous records.

“I actually got the same reaction from Sander Gommans,” laughs Jansen, referring to his old After Forever bandmate. “I played him Design Your Universe and after the first song he asked me ‘Aren’t you able to do something new? I’m a bit disappointed that you’re still on the same track.’ I just told him to keep on listening (laughs). It’s a lot heavier than he and a lot of people expected. You really have to listen to the whole album before judging it. That’s why I asked Sander to listen to the other stuff before coming to any conclusions. From that point he kept giving me the thumbs up as the album progressed.”
“We tried to do some things that we’ve never done before,” Jansen continues. “The guitar solos, for example, Ad (Sluijter / ex-guitarist) was a solo guitarist but he didn’t want to play any, and you can’t force someone to do something they don’t want to do. So this is really the first Epica album with real guitar solos on it, and I loved working on them with Isaac. He would try out different solos on the songs and we’d decide which ones worked the best. It was fun to play around with them and work in that way. I’m very happy about having Isaac in the band. We wrote more and more with the guitars this time. In the past every song was built up starting with the orchestra, but this time half the songs started with only guitar riffs. For example, ‘Martyr Of The Free World’ and ‘Semblance Of Liberty’ were written completely on guitar and we added the orchestral parts here and there. It was a completely different way of working, but that’s what I mean by keeping yourself motivated and challenging yourself by doing something differently.”

Go to this location for the complete story.