Second support band for Sonata Arctica are Epica from the Netherlands.
Before this night, I had never heard their music, only their name, and seen a couple of band pictures. From this I had guessed that they were just another band riding on the wave of popularity created by other female fronted bands such as Nightwish and the like. This guess was not completely proven wrong from the show, although I was a bit thrown at seeing the female singer Simone Simons leave the stage early in the show (the first song I believe it was), not to enter again for a long time. Meanwhile, Mark Jansen, also on guitar, handled the vocal parts, and in a far more brutal way than I had expected from this band.

Although showing much energy on stage, the contact with the audience was a bit weak at first, as was the reaction to the band from the audience's side. This changed, though, further into the set, and the crowd seemed to warm up to them more and more. Towards the end, Epica had managed to get a good show going, with good mutual contact. Simone even threw her necklace out into the crowd at one point.
One thing that wasn't very good was the sound. The band was quite well balanced volume ways, except for the drums that were a bit high. The biggest problem, though, came from Simone's microphone, which was turned way to high up, causing her singing to drown out all the rest, yes, even making me worry for the safety of the speakers.

To sum up, this was a show of many different opinions. Some said it was very good, others disliked it a lot. For my part, I wasn't overly impressed, although this was probably mostly due to their musical style, which I rarely find interesting no matter who's playing.