Nightwish

Nightwish, a Finnish metal band known for their sweeping symyphonic compositions, have released their first album, Dark Passion Play (Roadrunner Records), since replacing singer Tarja Turunen (who has a solo album out now, Nov07). They tour Australia in February. My album review, which ran in The Courier-Mail, follows. IT'S a hard ask, replacing a band’s frontwoman just as they’re cracking it big in the US. With their previous album, Once, the Finnish band hit the charts and soundtracks on the back of the singles Nemo and Wish I Had An Angel, but then sacked singer Tarja Turunen. The search for a new set of lungs, in the lead-up to this album, has yielded a fitting replacement in Swede Anette Olzon. Her voice might be less operatic, but it carries a warmth and a range that fits the bill. This project is, however, the brainchild of Tuomas Holopainen, the band’s charismatic keyboardist who penned most of the music and lyrics here and was the engine behind’s the band’s formation six albums ago in 1996. Here he has taken the band yet further down the epic road, supported by orchestra and choir, with each song a mini-story in its own right often spanning more than five minutes. Opener The Poet and the Pendulum is even broken into acts across its 13 minutes. It’s no surprise this is Finland’s most expensively produced album. Each tune would fit neatly into a high fantasy or classic horror movie, or computer game, thanks to the dark themes and imagery running through the album on tracks such as Amaranth, Whoever Brings the Night and Cadence of Her Last Breath. Bye Bye Beautiful is a nod to Turunen’s departure; Sahara conjures the desert at night; Last of the Wilds is a Celtic-inspired instrumental offering a jig amidst the grandeur and bombast. Olzon is complemented and at times supplanted by the metal growl of bassist and vocalist Marco Hietala, notably on the thrashy Master Passion Greed and the shanty The Islander. She gets to show her range on the ballad Eva, the first, charity single which saw the band accused of plagiarism. While the album might be overlong at an hour and a quarter, it shows Nightwish as serious competition to Within Temptation and their ilk when it comes to symphonic metal. Nightwish's official website