Okay, instead of doing what I should have been doing (in this case, revising my creative writing text and typing it in) I have once again been doing other things (in this case, listening to Nightwish and reading numerous interviews in four languages about Nightwish). I guess I have one hell of a night ahead of me because of my lazyness. I assume I have more caffeine hidden somewhere...
Anyway, I wanted to share with the rest of you (some of you are statistically likely to own the album so you'll know what I'm talking about) some feelings and reactions I had from 'Dark Passion Play' (the title has a double meaning according to Maestro Holopainen).
'The Poet and the Pendulum' - I'll just skip any analyses of Poe at this point since that was so very clearly overcome by something else: isn't Holopainen afraid of being so honest? Apart from the lyrics, the music hit me since I like progressive power metal. All the parts, whether an expression of aggression or a melancholic lullaby of worry, they seem to blend with each other, and every single time the chorus stops me.
"You live long enough to hear the sound of guns.
Long enough to find yourself screaming every night.
Long enough to see your friends betray you."
And furthermore:
"'Today, in the year of our Lord 2005,
Tuomas was called from the cares of the world.
He stopped crying at the end of each beautiful day.
The music he wrote had too long been without silence.
He was found naked and dead,
with a smile on his face, a pen and 1000 pages of erased text.'"
Another one of my favourites turned out to be 'Cadence of her last breath'. There's something incredibly addictive in the intro beginning with a piano melody and then followed by, what I perceive as aggressive guitars, with very nice sound. I listened to this song three times in a row; first with 'normal' sound, then with extra basses and finally with extra-extra basses. I'm telling you, the last one was best to accompany Anette's voice. The 'runaways' in the chorus I think could have been left out altogether; they just make the song sound llike Evanescence or some other American wannabe-Nightwishes.
'Eva' - obviously, having been bullied myself, I can relate myself to her complitely. This song actually made me cry, it's just so beautiful and sorrowful.
'For the heart I once had' made chilly shivers run down my spine. And I can assure you, they were not of pleasure but of sheer horror. The intro sounds *exactly* like that of an "iskelmä" song. I was absolutely terrified then, and I still have difficulties not to think of this and get all these negative connotations fill my mind while listening to the song.
Anette Olzon did her job extremely well on the album. So her voice doesn't range as much as Turunen's voice but it doesn't really even matter much to me. Only once (in the chorus of 'The Poet and the Pendulum', to be precise) did I wonder for a second what it would sound like sung by a trained soprano instead of someone testing the limits of their voice that much. Nightwish has had a few geeks already as Nightwish cover bands (such as Natuvissyt and Nachtwisser) so some already have an idea how the old songs, the classics, flow when sung by Anette. I'm sure some songs will stay out of the performance lists (like 'The Phantom and the Opera') but I'm slightly worried if they've changed the old ones a bit too much. Or worse: just a tiny little thing that you can't quite put your finger on but that still bothers you as a listener. What about her stage charisma? What I can see from the photos on NW Gallery looks like at least the wardrobe is not that similar with Tarja's. Okay, *far* too much comparing. In a nutshell, Anette will probably do well. Even her Swedishness doesn't bother (yet... let us wait for the Finland vs. Sweden annual ice hockey match...).
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And now, circulating blood carrying water molecules a mother drank to the brains of her unborn child. Let's see how difficult that turns out to be.
