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Bye Bye Beautiful

After firing their former vocalist via an open letter, NIGHTWISH have exercise their demons and hit back with their most ambitious offering to date. By Nina Bertok.

Ah, those Europeans and their melodic metal – some have said it’s in the water, others say it’s in their blood, but according to Nightwish keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen, it’s quiet simply, “In the mothers milk.”
And he must have been one hungry baby, because when it comes to composing atmospheric symphonies of colossal proportions, in his native Finland, Holopainen is pretty much The Don. No surprise then that his bands sixth offering – the jaw-dropping, 75-minute titanic Dark Passion Play – managed to reach platinum on the date of its Finnish release, double platinum in 48 hours, and, at the time of this writing, has gone almost triple platinum.

“We just got an SMS last night that the album went to number one in Germany and in Switzerland,” Holopainen says, clearly still trying to get his head around the fuss surrounding the new release. “It’s been totally amazing, it’s just incredible. The response we’ve been getting for this album has been extremely positive from everybody. We tried to make ourselves prepared for it but, honestly, the response has just been overwhelming.”

Which is appropriate considering the overwhelming nature of the album itself. Everything about Dark Passion Play is big, and then some. Kicking things off with the 14-minute epic “The Poet and the Pendulum”, the album sets off on a grand journey of heavy guitars, layers of melody, and celestial vocals, which soar and crash throughout. There’s majesty, but there’s also menace.

“The album was something of an exercising of demons, definitely,” Holopainen states. “Writing the songs was like an ocean pouring out of me. It was very easy and it came out really naturally for me. I’ve had some pretty terrible times over the last few years and there’s been a lot of bad stuff happening so it was a form of getting things out. 2005 was one of the shittiest times of my life, it was living hell, so I isolated myself for a couple of months and it really inspired my song writing. I guess everyone deals with bad times in their own different ways, and for me writing these songs was a way of dealing with those things.”

Die-hard fans of the band would know exactly what Holopainen speaks of, but for those less in-the-know, here’s a short history lesson…

In 2005, Nightwish recorded the aptly titled End of an Era live DVD/CD in front of a sold out Finnish audience. Directly after the show, the band fired vocalist Tarja Turunen via an open letter citing her commercial interests and her husband’s interference as the primary reasons for giving her the boot. To most fans Turunen’s firing came as an extreme shock – including, allegedly, to the front-woman herself. In fact, turmoil within Nightwish had been brewing for many years, according to the bands later claims.

But these days, Nightwish prefer to let sleeping dogs lie. “If people want to know what happened, they can buy the book,” Holopainen says, referring to Mape Ollilas 2006 Nightwish biography Once Upon a Nightwish, which documents the bands rise to fame and the turbulent relationship with Turunen. Rather than focusing on the past, Holopainen is eager to praise Turunen's replacement, Anette Olzon, who managed to beat 2000 other hopefuls in an open audition held following Turunen’s unceremonious dumping.

“What can I say,” Holopainen laughs, “She’s a 36-year-old Swedish mum with a young child, so she’s seen a lot of life already. She is extremely charming, warm and down to earth. We couldn’t be happier.”

Admittedly, Olzon was something of a curious choice considering her pop-orientated background and claims she hadn’t previously been too familiar with the bands music. “She’s not your stereotypical metal singer for sure,” concedes Holopainen. “She’s been singing in a band called Alyson Avenue for the past 13 years and an ABBA cover band. She’s also done a lot of musicals, so she’s a very experienced, though not in the metal scene. She is also the most ordinary person without the slightest bit of a dramatic element in her. She’s got a great sense of humour and good self-esteem too,” lists Holopainen assuredly.

Considering that Olzon was one of the first of 2000 people to send in a demo tape, her voice had obviously made a lasting impression on the Nightwish members.

“The first thing that I noticed about her was her voice, of course – we just felt that it came out so easily and naturally and it especially fitted the new songs perfectly. But we had no idea what kind of person she would be. After we met her the first time, we immediately clicked, which is hard to find. Y’know, the right person, right melody and voice in the same body – she’s just the complete package,” Holopainen claims.

While the keyboardist sounds genuinely chuffed with the bands newest addition, he is well and truly over the Turunen-related fiasco. But one question still begs to be asked – what’s the deal with “Bye Bye Beautiful”, a song rumoured to be a kind of last “fuck you” to the former vocalist?

“Well, it’s more of a farewell to Tarja. If people listen to the song they’ll notice that there’s no hatred in it whatsoever. It was never meant to be about that, it just goes through all those feelings of frustration. It was made with good intention rather than out of spite,” Holopainen insists.

Indeed, the overall positive vibe one gets when hearing Holopainen talk about his band confirms that Nightwish definitely have a bright future ahead to go with their glorious past.

“We’re taking the next step and we’re starting from a clean table with a new singer. There are a lot of good memories and it blows my mind every single day how much had happened since 1996. I think about it every day.”

Although Holopainen is credited as the bands primary “visionary”, funnily enough he claims there was never a definite “vision” from the beginning.

“You can’t plan things, you can’t do that to yourself because things may not come out that way. There really was no vision for this band in the start, there was hope that things would turn out alright and they have.”

That’s an understatement of the year when taking into account that Holopainen's band has come to be identified as the one responsible for giving birth to the “symphonic metal” genre, among others.

“We’ve been given so many categories that I couldn’t list them all,” Holopainen chuckles. “My favourite is “pussy metal”, though I would describe us as “landscape metal” personally. Actually, a lot of the time people done really know how to categorise us which gives me a great satisfaction. Its great when people aren’t able to pigeonhole you because there’s nothing worse than being put into this square that you can’t get out of.”

As far as the European metal genre is concerned, Holopainen believes its something uniquely embedded in the roots of the people. Something that simply flows in their veins.

“Its about you background; where you’re from comes out in your music. If you listen to American music, there’s a lot of pop or their metal is distinctly aggressive. It’s the same with reggae and where black people come from as well as melodic metal in European countries. It’s just in the blood, I think, it’s in the mother’s milk.”



Nightwish
Dark Passion Play
Roadrunner 8/10
Question: Ever wondered what the sonic equivalent of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy would sound like? Answer: Nightwish’s sixth full-length opus Dark passion Play. Much like the grand movie epic, this album is a gothmospheric odyssey of massive proportions, as witnessed from the get-go with the opener “The Poet and the Pendulum” – a progressive, 14 minute monster that could’ve easily made for five separate tunes in itself. In fact, the track is so bombastic and symphonic that it leans towards a musical than merely a song – wizards, goblins and all. Things also get a little folky with the Celtic gem “The Islander” and instrumental piece “Last of the Wilds”, both of which could’ve quite effortlessly made themselves at home on the Braveheart soundtrack. Likewise, first single “Eva” is a majestic, melancholy classic that may well inspire some serious wrist-slashing among weaker at heart, though definitely making for a hands-down highlight. All in all, however, they don’t call this band symphonic metal for nothing – “
Bye Bye Beautiful” and “Master Passion Greed” maintain the venom and brutality Nightwish have equally come to be known for, with heavy guitars, double bass drumming and furious growls courtesy of bassist Marco Heitala. Just as well then that the middle finger is pointed directly at former vocalist Tarja Turunen, as both tracks are said to be inspired by her 2005 dismissal. Having said that, her replacement Anette Olzon may not posses the operatic pedigree and glass-shattering shrieks but she can still belt out on hell of a high register while adding a much-welcomed, rockier edge to it all. Dark passion play is a 75 minute gothtastic journey into the darker side of the mind and one well worth taking, now it only Evanescence would take note.