Nightwish has been one of my absolute favourite bands for a huge chunk of my life, since I was about thirteen years old. Ultimately, they are also the very reason for me being in Australia at all. I was therefore quite ecstatic when I was offered to interview the mastermind Tuomas Holopainen, before the band return to Australia on their Endless Forms Most Beautiful World Tour in January. I was lucky enough to witness Nightwish’s full stage production in Copenhagen, Denmark two weeks ago, and whilst I anticipated Tuomas’ answer to the question, I still wanted to know if they would bring any pyrotechnics or the stage props to Australia this time around.“Unfortunately not. We need to sell quite a few more albums in Australia to be able to pull off the full production. Hopefully one day. Still, it`s important to also be able to have a show to remember without the extras. Australia next January will be a blast, as always!â€Over the last few years Nightwish has largely excluded their earliest releases from their setlist. ‘Angels Fall First’, ‘Oceanborn’ and ‘Wishmaster’ are some of my top albums of all time, and I really wanted to know if these albums will get more attention on future tours.“There is a very good chance for that, yes. For the Endless Forms Most Beautiful – tour the songs and setlists are pretty much set in stone, but we`ve been twiddling with the idea of seriously exploring the old school stuff for the future. Will be quite the nostalgia trip. And lots of fun seeing Floor trying to keep a straight face while singing the lyrics of “Elvenpathâ€.â€Original Nightwish drummer Jukka Nevalainen was forced to a timeout from the band due to chronic insomnia before recordings commenced for Endless Forms Most Beautiful. The band’s statement read that Jukka would not participate on the album or the following world tour. There haven’t been many news to be found about the drummer recently, and given that he’s one my teenage years heroes, I’ve been anxious to know how he is doing.“Jukka is doing much, much better! He’s as happy as I’ve ever seen him, but we’ll decide the future plans once this tour is finished and everybody gets a breather.â€Tuomas revealed that there are plans for another huge live DVD release.“We’ve been filming a bunch of shows already and will release a DVD/Blu-Ray package containing loads of live stuff, making of’s and extras, most likely in late 2016.â€One quite unique thing with Nightwish is that they constantly tour with great special guest/supporting acts. The list is quite extensive, but some of the bands are Voyager, Volbeat, Delain and Sabaton.“It’s a mutual decision between the band and the management. We simply aim for great bands with great people. And on the plus side I get a fanboy moment seeing bands like Paradise Lost, Sabaton, Delain, Sonata Arctica and Amorphis every night! At the moment we are touring Europe with Arch Enemy and Amorphis, and it’s a perfect harmony.â€One thing that is well-known amongst the hardcore Nightwish fans is that Tuomas absolutely loves Australia. He did a quite extensive road trip a couple of years ago between Perth and Cairns, and I was curious about if he had another trip planned for the future, and if he would have moved here if it wasn’t for Nightwish.“It was the best adventure we ever had, and yes, it needs to be repeated! Maybe through the Northern Territory next time. There is something very special in Australia that I adore and love, but I’d never go as far as to actually move there. I love Finland and couldn’t survive without the four seasons, the dark sense of humour and the view from our home porch.â€Troy Donockley’s first Nightwish related appearance was on Dark Passion Play. Since then he’s joined the band as a permanent member. He might not appear on every song during a Nightwish show, but his musical ability is beyond amazing and the man is also extremely entertaining on stage. I asked Tuomas if there are any instruments that Troy can’t play, and whilst on the subject, what unused instruments that he would like to include on future Nightwish albums.“His tuba playing skills leave a lot to be desired. (He can only do “Let Me Call You Sweetheart†with that) And yes, he’s quite the magician, on stage and off stage. There’s a massive amount of unused instruments and voices out there that we’d love to experiment with, from Tibetan monks to the church organs of Notre Dame.â€Endless Forms Most Beautiful has only been out for eight months, but I still wanted to know if Tuomas had any plans or inspirations for the next album already.“I was utterly and happily drained after finishing with the album, and still am to a certain extent. 100% satisfied with the album, though, after an 8-month mental hangover. For me personally EFMB is an ultimate achievement, especially the track “The Greatest Show On Earthâ€. It’s going to take some time to discover new stories (with similar inspiration and awe) to write songs about. I’m sure it will come, but it will likely take some years. There are enough acts out there doing music with nothing to say.â€One of Tuomas’ big dreams for a long time has been to perform with a full orchestra in London. However, it is something that won’t be happening yet.“This is something that has been in the planning for a decade already, but it hasn’t lead to anything tangible yet. It has to happen at some point but unfortunately not during this EFMB tour.â€My last question for Tuomas this time around was: “You find out that you will be deserted on a tropical island for the rest of your life. You get to pick one bottomless bottle of any alcoholic beverage to bring with you. What beverage/brand do you pick?â€â€œAny Australian Shiraz. Easy.â€
There’s plenty of things in metal that may be true, but you’re not supposed to say them. You’re not supposed to repeat that Megadeth and Mayhem are less reliable live than West Ham United at home (one week, they’ll triumph over the very best, the next, they’ll be comfortably second best to some two-bob, no-talent outfit you’ve never heard of). It’s not polite to point out that, while it might be hugely influential, Scum is a very long way from being Napalm Death’s best record. And no one wants to be the first to admit that death metal’s been in a creative slump since Organic Hallucinosis came out. But if there’s one thing that will get you loudly told to fuck off by the band’s die-hard fans, it’s saying that Nightwish aren’t just better with Floor Jansen in the band than they were with Anette Olzon – it’s that they’re better with her than Tarja Turunen. And in fact, the band has never been in as good a state as they are now.The Anette vs Floor case shouldn’t be hard to make – and, while this might be harsh on their former singer, you’ll find dissenting voices out there seem to be in the minority. Anette was a fine pop metal singer, but Floor can do that style better and with a more powerful, emphatic delivery, and injects far more personality into it to boot. But of course, it’s more than that: she can do the old stuff too. Stargazers was back in the live set recently (one of the best surprises of Hellfest this year), with full operatic melodrama and all the trimmings – and Anette simply couldn’t pull that off so well. Add in that Floor’s a proper metal singer with a long pedigree and can do growled aggressive vocals, and – while Anette’s contribution to Imaginaerum was superb – it took about 15 minutes of the live show and three minutes of Endless Forms Most Beautiful to realise the Swede was not missed.The Tarja case, however, is more difficult. She was, after all, the singer with who the band made their name, the singer with whom they made their most popular albums, and helped define (for better or worse) an entire subdivision of European heavy metal. And on paper, it’s hard to refute this. The first five albums (even the embryonic Angels Fall First) still stand up well after nearly two decades. Wishmaster is so rammed full of anthems you could re-release it as a Greatest Hits, there’s a glorious gothic darkness to Oceanborn that no corseted clone has managed to match no matter how many times they’ve ripped it off, and Century Child proved that there was more to the band than just an opera metal shtick.It’s Once, however, where there are some cracks in the construction. And it’s not Tuomas Holopainen’s lush songwriting, which is at its best. Nor is it the expanded presence of Marco Hietala’s vocals – in fact, the Tarot man’s presence had given Nightwish a huge asset that, nowadays, it’s strange to think they ever lacked. It’s not simply the clarity and tunefulness of Marco’s voice, it’s that he’s able to adapt it so easily to the context (contrast his performances on I Wish I Had An Angel, The Crow, The Owl And The Dove and Weak Fantasy for examples).The problem is that Nightwish were, with hindsight, obviously straining at the confines of the “opera metal†tag – in fact, they’d arguably left it mostly behind by this point. The mellifluous vocal melodies that suited the earlier work is waning in favour of a generally more traditional, syllabic metal style, with the coloratura sections relegated to flavouring rather than the whole sauce. And Tarja was particularly well-suited to it – in fact, it’s arguably her weakest performance. On Wanderlust, she sounded like a superstar; on Nemo, she sounds like she was struggling to keep up.Both Tarja and Anette are specialists; give them the style they are suited for and they’ll kick the crap out of most of the competition. But, like Sam Burgess, stick them into a format they know less well, and it’ll get messy fast.Floor, however, has no such problems. She is equally accomplished doing the poptastic hooks, the boisterous metal singing, or the rich operatic style – sometimes all in one song, as in the absolutely brilliant closing number of the latest album. And this is not in the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-fuck-all sense it is may imply: Floor excels in all required styles.Floor isn’t the only extra tool Nightwish now have, however. For one, they’ve got Kai Hansen on drums, and he’s fucking brilliant. He’s so good, he taught former drummer Juka Nevalainen to play jazz drums for Slow, Love, Slow on Imaginaerum. Oh, and he’s best known to Wintersun, who are generally magnificent (even if they do produce albums less often than Axl Rose turns up on time). They also now have a folk musician in the band full-time in the shape of Britain’s Troy Donockley (a decent singer to boot) so they aren’t forced to either drop certain songs from the setlist or synthesise the uilleann pipe parts. Add in the aforementioned excellence of Marco, and they have more assets than they have previously enjoyed. Plus they are big enough to command a production budget to do their ideas justice.This leaves Nightwish more flexible than they have ever been. If Tuomas Holopainen wants to write a ten-track, 40-minute album of pop metal hits with no fussing around and simple verse-chorus structure, he can. Or if he wants to write stupidly bombastic, inflated 24-minute songs featuring pipes, piano, orchestra, operatic singing, poptastic power vocals, big hooks, monkey noises and whalesong, and Richard Dawkins they can – and, indeed, have.Of course, that isn’t to say that Endless Forms Most Beautiful is, by default, their best record – it isn’t. It’s darn good, but they’ve done better, and with both former singers. It’s let down in one or two places either by a bit of a clunk (the chorus of the title track is admittedly forced) or by the occasional slip from their high standards (Edema Ruh, for example, is a bit wet, even discounting the fact it’s inspired by a book that could politely be described as an excremental smear on the distended rectum of high fantasy, a tale that’s so infantile it makes the first Harry Potter book look like Game Of Thrones).This does not, however, serve as a guide for Nightwish’s future. Transition records are difficult at the best of times. Even though the opening track The Poet And The Pendulum is up there with the band’s best, Dark Passion Play, the band’s first record with Anette, is probably their weakest. It’s not poor, it’s just much worse than their best. Endless Forms… is only slightly off the top of the pile, and even that is purely down to a couple of duff moments. As a marker for the future, this is exceptionally encouraging, as the next album should be even better.Nightwish aren’t confined or restricted from doing what they want – and appear to have the judgement not to make ill-advised musical decisions. They have their best, most versatile singer, can do anything from their catalogue live, and have managed to go through their line-up changes without haemorrhaging fans. Apparently that clichíé about what doesn’t kill you might have some truth in it.
