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translated by The Enigma

Nightwish: Imaginaerum pre-listening session at Finnvox Studios, Helsinki Oct 10. 2011


Usually pre-listening sessions happen in one of Finnvox's isolated studio rooms where media people are stuffed like sardines in a can. Not today. About 30 representatives of media have arrived for the 14 pm pre-listening session of the Imaginaerum CD by Nightwish, due out Nov 30. 2011. Such a large flock of "media reindeers" is chased in an auditorium which has been set up in the drum recording room.

The room has bee decorated with art from the CD booklet. The whole back wall is covered by the Imaginaerum-panorama with the CD-cover included. In front of us we have the wheel from Storytime CDS cover, formed of a raven, a dove and an owl. Seven more symmetrically placed framed pictires and wall-cloths present us a dusty library, airships, a storm-beaten rocks occupied by mermaids and other fantastic images which I'm not allowed to tell about yet. The band also banned photography in the listening room, hence I will not describe even verbally the booklet art by ToxicAngel, the band's "palace-artist" from Kitee, but anyone can have a look at the photos and t-shirts which have been published already.

Viewing the art is a clever move from the band. The pictures are not set up for decoration, but to guide us. They intend to manipulate the listeners, to tell us what kind of images the music is about to create.

The band sit in the right-hand corner in the back. We guests are about to hear the album for the first time. The four in the back - the singer is not present - have had the 75-minute colossus for an album up to their throats. Like any band after finishing a new CD.

The meadia monkeys set their asses to the bench, shut the traps and open the ears.

Rattle, like winding a watch. Taikatalvi. no, it's not a watch, rather a musical box. Yes. Bling, blong, bling, a baby's musical box starts up for a walz. An old-style Finnish walz sung by Marco Hietala in his domestic language, softly, but scratchy.

On Storytime Emppu's guitar growls an edgy, thrashmetal-like riff. The guitar wall is so thick and sharp that the guitar doesn't ring but only growls; industrial-like, without a melody. The London Philharmonics roar with full line-up straight from the beginning. No wonder why this track was picked as the first single. The sound of Anette Olzon who first time gets to sing a song composed for her own voical range makes me think that probably nobody has ever welded so seamlessly together some pole-hammer riff, Hans Zimmer and ABBA. The chorus is light like the wind, luminous and uplifting, it flies, in the same spirit as "Dark Chest Of Wonders". Towards the end Anette Olzon's harmonic singing grows constantly into bigger role and makes the hair stand up. Now, she has taken a serious hold of the singing duties and makes me think "hey, is this how the genuine Anette can sing"?

I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera,
Ah this indeed is music -- this suits me.

The main riff of Ghost river is atypically twisted for a Nightwwish song. In some pervy way it reminds me about Eddie Van Halen's string twirling. The song is partially more depressing than "Higher Than Hope", but never so slow. In the backing noise spins a carousel with horses; step right up, two-pence a ride, would I dare? Guitar plays surprising hardrock-ish melody leads. The orchestra roars itself into the same category of massiveness like on "Poet And The Pendulum" which actually comes to mind in the C-part of this track. Also the children choir is heard.

Slow, Love, Slow is smoky nightclub jazz from Hell. After the piano intro we can hear the miraculous thing that on a Nw-record there are brushes used to play swing. The song is built by a piano, a cello, a clarinet, a trumpet and a completely clincally played guitar solo which according to Vuorinen's own words would never had happened in sober condition. Hence the best take was saved "at zero-point-three level at the last year's summer camp". Anette Olzon moans, stretches, ruffles, sighs and almost howls, like flirting on top of a grand piano. If Tuomas still writes his diary in music and everything affects in anything, so could these influences have come from New Orleans? The track ends in clanking, like a pendulum of a grandfather's clock. TICK – TOCK - TICK – TOCK – TICK – TOCK – TICK – it doesn't seem to end at all – TOCK – TICK – TOCK – TICK – TOCK – TICK – TOCK – TICK, until, without a break between tracks, explodes...

I Want My Tears Back, with thrash-like riffs spiced celtic folk. Wellwhynot? The track could be re-named ”Last Of The Wilds”/”Erämaan viimeinen” part two. The "sixth member" of Nightwish, the ethno-piper maestro Troy Donockley takes responsibility about the melody with his Uileann pipes and tin whistle. The light-hearted orchestra accompany him. The track is melodic, a fresh gust of wind and the chorus makes a granted hit. Would be a miracle if this song one day didn't find it's way on a CDS release.

Scaretale. A grand piano, a church bell and a child's horror. A new sound emerges from Anette's throat. Now Olzon snarls and growls like an evil witch. The orchestra plays loud and rattling double bass drumming takes Nightwish back to their powermetal roots for a while. The interlude is frightening, depressing. The track turns into a nightmare in the bouncing, insane play which souds like Danny Elfman chewed one magic mushroom too many and attacked in the Finntrolls' training cave in the middle of their most intense fly-agaric-mushroom ratatattat-humppa session.

Arabesque brings the lunatics back down from the walls and takes them straight to the Middle East. The track is very strange, oriental sounding instrumental. The rhythmic part felt distant but created strong images. Is this an Arabic bar? A death dance of an Egyptian arabesk dancer?

Turn Loose The Mermaids starts with a piano, strings and acoustic guitar as a slow song. Pounding drums and Troy's flute will take over and the song turns into Irish-folk gear. Marco whistles a clean Ennio Morricone -style spaghetti-western theme for the C-part. Close the end Anette's harmonies make the hair stand up again. The song stops abruptly in the middle of a folkish pace. Was there any orchestra at all?

Rest Calm opens with a very Nightwish'y guitar riff. I'd even liked to call it bland: ratatat, ratatat. The verse roars like helluvaplanet but the chorus makes an interesting break-out from the usual pop-stencil. It's not risen higher but instead the chorus is sung more silent and calm, slower. Moderato. The third chorus round Anette shares with the children choir and the song erupts towards the end like making room for something megalomaniac coming next, but...

The Crow, The Owl And The Dove is completely different Nightwish than anything before. The band named this "the fowl song". It's delicate duet; pure pop without a hint about metal or cinema. Not even orchestra. If this will ever go on a single, it will rather be played on the mainstream radio than on metal broadcasts. Troy Donocley singing in old style English proves himsef to be a decent voclist. The man has a cool sound which makes a great match to Anette's.

Last Ride Of The Day. The park will be closed, the Ferris Wheel will spin one more time, it's time to end the games of the day and for the Deadboy to lay down. The arrangement of this goliath is in the class of a 50-storey building. My diminutive and evil mind flashed a thought that with this track all the sound nerds watching the soundwave graphics on their computer screens will have a reason to whine about how the dynamic range is flattened, limiters beeping alert, how the sound has been squashed, loudness war and quackquackquack. This track is surrealistic Nightwish-orchestra-heavy-metal as one may expect from them, if there ever will be anything "typical" to expect from Nightwish. By the way, this track contains the only high-flying guitar solo on the album.

Song Of Myself
song 1: From A Dusty Bookshelf
song 2: All That Great Heart Lying Still
song 3: Piano Black
song 4: Love

The border of the parts in this gigantic epos won't clearly shape up with one listen. The track is based on Walt Whitman's transcendential poem (of which the rhymes between this article's section's have been brutally ripped) The melodic spine of this mammouth of a track is ”All That Great Heart Lying Still”, which could be separated and made into another track. ”Piano Black” passed my ears without leaving traces, curse of these damned pre-listening sessions. Even if one had the mental abilty to form a shape from pieces, combined with a perfect auditory memory, it would be impossible to digest all of such an epic track like this. "Love" ponders in Troy's beautifully higlighting voice about things wich most time remain unseen. Misery and beauty, bad luck and pity, like sneakily, by the corner of the eye and in filthy alleys. Observed but then ignored in the furious pace of being. The curse of the world and it's humans, roughness and charm, all between the same bookends. ”Love” speaks with the voices of Nightwish's dearest, impossible to identify, but Imaginaerum will make them all immortal. Forever. Symbolism, metaphors, multiple meanings. There are definitely more, much more layers in this track than ears can recognize. The full scale of emotions in this track will most likely remain uncomprehended for everyone except for Tuomas himself.

At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
And that we call Being.

Imaginaerum. Once again, everything repeated, a second round without the bands's instruments. A packed combination of pieces taken from all tracks but never repeating any. An interesting outcome, almost shapeless yet coherent ending for the album which will leave one's head sizzling with thoughts.

None of the media people says a word. An hour and a quarter has passed, yet nobody realized nor expected the album to have ended. Marco has to tell it aloud to us.

Some people have claimed the new album as the heaviest and most pompous form Nightwish yet. I do not agree at all. The sound environment on the CD is just as massive and crowded as before, but when comparing the sound wall [to previous CDs] the claim is untrue. The symphony orchestra does not roar on every track, neither does Emppu's Mesa-Boogie Dual Rectifier crank up it's crushing wall of sound. By the athmosphere Imaginaerum is partially heavy, but as a whole it lacks the gloominess of Dark Passion Play, it lacks the coal-black internality of ”The Poet And The Pendulumin” and it does not have any ”Master Passion Greed” and ”Bye Bye Beautiful” -type mental vomiting expressions. Sure Imaginaerum is partially heavy like a 50-storey building and crazy as an outhouse rat, but it was not forced to become as such. It is a lot more liberated album than it's predecessor.

Imaginaerum definitely is the most challenging and maybe the most difficult album of Nightwish. When the repertoire will be stretched from the mix of a typical Finnish walz and musical box-lullaby through irish-folk-metal to a children choir and louge jazz during the first four tracks already, the listener can be assured that the album contents is exactly what the cover promises: roller-coasters and merry-go-rounds, amusement parks and ghost trains.

Will Imaginaerum be the best Nightwish album? I can not tell. At many parts it is like continuation for Dark Passion Play, but with the exception that Nightwish expanded the scale of their expression and thir set of musical tools. The body of Nightwish's metal existence seems stalled: Of the heaviest riffs on Imaginaerum only the one in ”Ghost Riverin” can be called creative, others sound a bit boring. Looks like the metal side of the band has been left a support role on purpose, when more fantastastic symphonies and now also even more experimental music styles are gaining space.

”Taikatalvi”, ”Slow, Love Slow” and ”Arabesque” are difficult by the shape of their musical language for "Joe the Metalhead" to comprehend already, neither will the wildly bouncing ”Scaretale” ease the listener's burden. "Storytime", "I Want My Tears Back" and "Last Ride Of The Day" found at the less demanding end of the lengthy artistic scale of this album are just typical instant-hits, the kind we luckily are able to spot on every Nightwish album and which can't be avoided on radio channels for the next few years. But as a whole, after a couple of listens, Imaginaerum is a surrealsitic experience which does not feel like 75 minutes long at all.

One has to sit in this Ferris Wheel for several rounds to believe that it even exist in the first place, and for the next, to figure out how far one can see from the top of it.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.

We will now stay and wait for the movie. The music creates enormous expectations for the film. It opens a silver screen for the listeners, for everybody to create their own story on it.

March - April 2012 will become 'Storytime'. Towards it we will be guided by the twiggy arm of the Snowman.