We have seen the orchestrated shift when Epica’s seventh studio album The Holographic Principle released around this time last year via Nuclear Blast. Since then, these Dutch symphonic metal visionaries haven’t had much of a break, especially from embarking a few tours in support of their bold effort. It wasn’t too long ago when they surprised us with the announcement of their new EP, The Solace System, which will be released this Friday (Sept 1) via Nuclear Blast.  

Hopefully, we will hear one of these tracks live once they kick off their North American run this Thursday (31) with Lacuna Coil, Insomnium, and Elantris. Today (29) they unveiled one of the EP’s somber tracks, “Immortal Melancholy,” in a brand new animated video.

Guitarist/vocalist Mark Jansen explained:

“The listeners can expect a high-quality EP — with songs that are far too good to use them only as bonus tracks. We wanted to publish these songs together in a context. It is always hard to decide at the end of a recording process which songs will be on the album, because this means that you have to miss some songs with best quality, just because they do not fit quite well into the overall flow of the record or because there are other songs that are more suited to the lyrics.”

Vocalist Simone Simons commented:

“During the early writing process of ‘The Holographic Principle’, we found out that we were blessed with a huge amount of songs. The songs that didn’t fit on our album are now available for you on this special EP! I hope you guys will enjoy these songs as much as we do!”

Watch the sorrowful tune below: