Why do you think metal in Northern Europe is so strong compared to other places it pops up in, such as South America, and Latin America and Japan?

Coen: It's not like that. I think it’s the same everywhere. You have to place it against how big the country is, how big the market is. I think it’s a niche market everywhere, but somehow the Americans believe that everybody in Europe likes that kind of music. Maybe that there are more European bands that make this kind of music. Maybe the people in Holland believe that every big rock star or pop star comes from the U.S., which is not true at all. We’ve played everywhere around the world from South Africa to Japan, to Australia, to South America. There’s market for it everywhere, I think.

Isaac: Yeah, sometimes bands like to create the perception that if they're really doing well in a certain country, of course, they will put it out there like, 'See how big we are!' Which doesn’t necessarily mean they’re really big somewhere else in the world. So yeah, some bands are really huge in Europe, and they don’t mean anything in the U.S., or they’re really big in Japan, and back at home they barely sell albums. It’s a strange thing I guess in every country. Also, I’m from Belgium, it’s one of the smallest countries in the world. Even there, we have superstars. They can say that there will be a tour, and a minute later they will be sold out. And if they just cross the border and drive for two hours to Holland, nobody will show up. So they don’t even go there. I guess every country has those kinds of local stars, and that also happens with metal bands.

Your music has to be able to scale from the band performing, to performing with a choir, to performing with an orchestra. Do you initially write with the knowledge and ability to scale as part of a plan, or do you have to go back and revisit your work to rearrange and recompose for those larger performances?

Coen: In the live performances you have to rearrange stuff a little bit, and write it for that actual amount of musicians and instruments. But I guess since it is symphonic metal, the music is originally written to be performed with live folks on the choir. When the choir is recorded, it is written down. How big of a choir you use doesn't really matter. Only if you use different instruments like if you use certain woodwinds or mallets, you will have to write pieces down. But now with the latest album, because we only use real instruments, everything has already been written down. So, it would make live performances with an orchestra way easier. When we did Retrospect, our 10th anniversary, with a real orchestra, we had to write down everything and rearrange and score all those parts. It took a lot of work.

Issac: If you're writing, you kind of start from, 'I can use whatever I want. I have this whole orchestra that can back up that guitar riff or whatever.' So there are no real boundaries as far as the songwriting. It’s not like, 'Oh, we are a six-piece band so we only write for six people.' It's like we are a six piece band with an orchestra behind us and a choir.

Coen: And we don’t necessarily stick to a symphonic orchestra, like ethnic instruments, I like to use that a lot and percussion. Nowadays, with all the samples in libraries in computers, you can do whatever you want. Name it, and you can find a sample to use it. And then the fun part is to reenact that in the album and try to play all those instruments.

Isaac: We all like film scores, so it also opens the big box of samples or more modern sounds.