Hair Band Generica: Endless Forms Most Beautiful Is Still Orchestrally Interesting!

The Good: Music, Some decent lyrics
The Bad: Collaborative vocals are far less distinct than on earlier works
The Basics: The latest album by Nightwish, Endless Forms Most Beautiful is one of their stronger albums, but I found myself enjoying the music-only disc more than the statements they made on the primary disc!


It is a rare and pleasant thing for me when I choose an Artist Of The Month and during the month I am focused on them, they come out with a new album! March, however, is just one of those rare occurrences and this week sees the release of the eighth studio album by my Artist Of The Month, Nightwish. The album is Endless Forms Most Beautiful and it is instantly intriguing to me as one who has been studying the music of Nightwish for the month in that it is a significant vocal departure from where the band was for the bulk of their career. Instead of having a strong and distinctive overall sound, Endless Forms Most Beautiful is notable for being one of their best-composed albums with vocals that are hardly as distinct as on many of their past works.

Found on both a single-disc and deluxe two-disc presentation, I found the two-disc version was worth the investment for one simple reason: the music is better than the vocals. Floor Jansen, who leads the vocals on Endless Forms Most Beautiful might have a wonderful voice with a lot of range, but it is not evident on this album. The result is a symphonic rock album that is more notable as a modern "classical" album than a rock album with lyrics and vocals that are making an actual statement.

With eleven songs clocking out at 78:36 (twice that for the two-disc version, which duplicates the album with an instrumental-only disc), Endless Forms Most Beautiful is very much the work of Nightwish, even if the band has evolved from its original incarnation. All of the songs are written and composed by bandmembers Tuomas Holopainen and (when not writing on his own . . .) Marco Hietala. The band plays its own instruments and provides all of the lead vocals - though writer Richard Dawkins contributes some narration late on the album. The album is produced by Holopainen, so this is very much the creative vision of Nightwish as it is now.

Instrumentally, what that means is a lot of thrashing guitars, bass, and powerful percussion. Songs like "Shudder Before The Beautiful" are cacophanic and exactly as noisy as one might expect from the genre "symphonic metal." When the album is not being loud and chaotic, it is surprisingly melodic. The classic sound underlying Holopainen's compositions is evident when he actually gives the keyboards and strings something to do other than being pounded on. On "The Greatest Show On Earth - V. Sea-Worn Driftwood" there are hints of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" or Mussorgsky's "Great Gates Of Kiev." Perhaps that is why I enjoyed the second disc more than the first.

Vocally, Endless Forms Most Beautiful seems like much more of a collaborative work than other Nightwish albums. Backing vocals are more frequent and forceful on Endless Forms Most Beautiful; Floor Jansen seldom sounds like she is out singing on her own on much of the album. To Jansen's credit, though, her singing is very clear so when her (and the accompanying vocalists') vocals can be heard, they can be heard very clearly.

Much of Endless Forms Most Beautiful is a concept album by the lyrics. Much of the album is about evolution, genetics and the strength of eros (the drive for life). While some of that is disturbingly overt - like monologue that includes "We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of those stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?" ("The Greatest Show On Earth - IV. The Understanding") - much of the album is more subtle in its exploration of the wonders of life.

That is not to say Endless Forms Most Beautiful is entirely a departure from the fantasy music songs Nightwish built its fanbase on. With lines like "I will taste the manna in every tree / Liquid honey and wine from the distant hills / An early morning greenwood concerto / Greets my Walden with its eternal voice" ("My Walden") there is still a sense of magic and movement to a few of the songs. Floor Jansen's vocals do a decent job of reminding listeners of the potentially enchanting nature of Nightwish.

As well, Nightwish succeeds because of the band's use of imagery in its lyrics. It is easy to get a strong mental image when Jansen sings "The meadows of heaven await harvest / The cliffs unjumped, cold waters untouched / The elsewhere creatures yet unseen / Finally your number came up, free fall awaits the brave / Come / Taste the wine / Race the blind . . . Come / Surf the clouds / Race the dark . . ." ("Elan").

Ultimately, Endless Forms Most Beautiful does a decent job of keeping Nightwish relevant and interesting, but it is not as distinct or powerful an album as it could have been.

For more Nightwish albums, please check out my reviews of:
Angels Fall First
Wishmaster
Century Child
Highest Hopes: The Best Of Nightwish

6/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for a comprehensive, organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Remember That Album You Just Listened To? Neither Do I: Nightwish’s Wishmaster!

The Good: Decent vocals and overall sound
The Bad: Music produced over the lyrics, Not a melody in the bunch, Utterly indistinct
The Basics: The Nightwish album Wishmaster reaffirms that the band Nightwish should either play music or write poetry, but doing them both is doing a disservice to both!


For my last birthday, the big gift from my wife was the Blu-Ray boxed set of Fringe The Complete Series (reviewed here!). Perhaps because I have been going through that on a nightly basis (two episodes a night and a frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwich makes for an enjoyable, if macabre, ritual), I find myself thinking there is something seriously wrong with Wishmaster by Nightwish. For those unfamiliar with Fringe, in the first season, there is an episode where the antagonist uses alternating red and green lights to essentially hypnotize her victims. Those who see the blinking lights lose time and it affords her with an opportunity to escape. Nightwish’s Wishmaster is the auditory equivalent of those blinking lights.

For the last three days, I have had Wishmaster in high rotation at my home. For those unfamiliar with my reviews, I pride myself on listening to every album I hear at least eight times before writing anything about them. When I put Wishmaster in the first time, I realized my first listen to it was over because the changer powered down. I frowned and replayed the album and woke up to silence and discovered an hour had passed. I had gotten nine hours of sleep the night before. Each time I listened to Wishmaster, I would start by focusing on the music and listening to it intently and somewhere before the end of “The Kinslayer” (track two), I would zone out. Never in listening to the album did I become conscious and aware of the music again until the middle of “FantasMic.”

To get around the problem that Wishmaster apparently causes narcolepsy (do not operate heavy machinery while listening to this album!), after several attempts to get through the album in order, I went and played each track out of order to listen to them. While this had the advantage of keeping me conscious, it did nothing to improve the music or overall listening experience.

At the heart of the problem with Wishmaster is the issue that the music is dull and noisy. More than any other Nightwish album I have yet listened to, Wishmaster is an atonal mess that seems to be convinced that any random thrashing of guitar and bass mixed with keyboards and pounding drums is music. Wishmaster proves it is not. After eight spinnings of the album and a dedicated listen to each and every track, I could not pick a single song out from this album if quizzed five minutes from now. The songs are that amelodic and unmemorable.

Vocally, Tarja Turunen does a fine job, with her impressive soprano voice, but Wishmaster is produced so frequently the instrumental accompaniment overwhelms the vocals. The guest male vocalists and backing vocals suffer much the same fate as Turunen’s voice; they get lost amid the symphonic metal sound.

And Nightwish is almost entirely to blame for their own mess with Wishmaster. The eleven-track, fifty-six minute auditory abomination is written by two of the members of the band (Tuomas Holopainen wrote most, Emppu Vuorinen co-wrote three of the tracks with him). The band provides all of the primary vocals and the major instrumentation on the album. Nightwish co-produced the album with Tero Kinnunen, so they seemed to have a decent amount of creative control over Wishmaster.

Lyrically, Wishmaster is simple and predictably dark. Unfortunately, some of the lines are painfully obvious in their rhyme schemes. Amid fairly good poetry are cringeworthy lines like “Cease the pain / Life's just in vain / For us to gain / Nothing but all the same” (“Two For Tragedy”) which, in addition to being decidedly emo, is just juvenile for the diction.

It’s not all bad on Wishmaster, though. Some of the songs do possess beautiful imagery. When the lines “I want to see where the sirens sing / Hear how the wolves howl / Sail the dead calm waters of the Pacific / Dance in the fields of coral / Be blinded by the white / Discover the deepest jungle / I want to find The Secret Path / A bird delivered into my heart, so / It's not the end / Not the kingdom come” (“Wanderlust”) are sung, it is hard not to get a perfect mental picture of them in one’s mind!

Unfortunately, such imagery is not enough to justify Wishmaster. The album is just a classic mess.

For more Nightwish albums, please check out my reviews of:
Angels Fall First
Century Child
Highest Hopes: The Best Of Nightwish

1/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for a comprehensive, organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Back To The Beginning With Nightwish: Angels Fall First (My March Artist Of The Month!)

The Good: Voice is good, One or two lyrics
The Bad: Most of the music is amelodic, Obscured lyrics, Repetitive sound
The Basics: The debut of Nightwish foreshadows well what the group would become with Angels Fall First!


My wife is a real trooper when it comes to my music reviews. For music reviews, I insist on listening to each album at least seven times (usually, I am on the eighth spinning when I write the review) and more often than not, I choose an Artist Of The Month that my wife has no real interest in. Even the artists she likes that I immerse myself in, she gets sick from the repetition of their albums. So, this month, I gave her the choice of who I would study for the month. She narrowed it down to Nightwish and Bat For Lashes. Bat For Lashes only lost out only because they have so few albums (and I have already reviewed one!). So, my March Artist Of The Month is Nightwish and I am starting my study of them at their beginning with Angels Fall First.

If Angels Fall First is any indication, March is going to feel like a long month! As a fan of music with melodies, powerful lyrics that may be easily comprehended (for clarity, if not meaning), Nightwish is off to a bad start. Fortunately, the Finnish rock band has potential and the fundamentals for the group are not bad, even on their debut.

With only nine tracks, clocking out at 51:39, Angels Fall First is the symphonic metal debut of the Finnish band Nightwish. While it is mostly in English, the final track, “Lapland,” has extensive Finnish in the vocals. The lyrics were all written by Tuomas Holopainen (who is one of the bandmembers) and the songs were entirely composed by the band. The vocals and instruments are all performed and played by Nightwish and the album was produced by Holopainen and the band. At least at the time, this is very much the creative vision of the band Nightwish.

Instrumentally, Angels Fall First is a lot of electric guitars, bass and synthesizers. This is a loud album and after at least eight listens to it, I don’t think I could pick out a single tune from it. That is because the songs are largely amelodic. Much of the guitarwork is seemingly random thrashing on the guitars. “Elvenpath” opens the album with quiet keyboards and spoken word before the guitars explode to assault the ears with intensity and passionately-delivered vocals. The album continues with strong percussion and guitars acting more like percussive instruments than harmonizing melodymakers. The result is very much a “love it or hate it” sound . . . and one that is objectively very repetitive over the course of the nine songs on the album.

Vocally, Nightwish is led on Angels Fall First by Tarja Turunen and she has an impressive soprano voice. She sings with power and enthusiasm and pretty decent lung capacity. What she lacks, however, is the ability to articulate in English while emoting and carrying the notes. As a result, much of the poetics of Nightwish’s songs is lost to the overbearing instrumental accompaniment and her lack of enunciation. My wife was convinced one of the lines on the album was “sacrifice me to the Care Bears” and I could not contest her assertion based on Turunen’s vocals.

Lyrically, much of Angels Fall First is simply fantasy music. “Elvenpath” is a musical recitation of the creation of the One Ring. “Beauty And The Beast” is a musical retelling of that classic fairy tale. Fortunately, the Nightwish songs on Angels Fall First are not simply verbatim retellings of the familiar fantasy stories. Holopainen puts a very different twist on each of the stories he makes musical, usually from a more emotionally-realized perspective. So, for example, he recalls “Beauty And The Beast” with the lines “Remember the first dance we shared? / Recall the night you melted my uglyness away? / The night you left with a kiss so kind / Only a scent of beauty left behind / Ah, dear friend I remember the night / The moon and the dreams we shared / Your trembling paw in my hand / Dreaming of that northern land / Touching me with a kiss of a beast.”

Nightwish is not limited to only European fairy tales for their songs. They go into Christian rock territory on “The Carpenter” and they sing about Finland on the four-part “Lapland.” But their poetics are largely obscured by clashing guitars that create a mood more than tell a story/make a statement. The result is a debut that is fairly incoherent and unfortunately unimpressive.

For other previous Artist Of The Month selections, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Educated Guess - Ani DiFranco
@#%&*! Smilers - Aimee Mann
Liz Phair - Liz Phair

3/10

For other music reviews, please visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Best Of The Poseur Goths: Highest Hopes - Another "Best Of" From Unknowns!

The Good: Musically and lyrically interesting at points
The Bad: Repetitive sound, Nothing extraordinary, Many of the lyrics are obscured
The Basics: On an unremarkable compilation of "symphonic metal," I find just enough to recommend a Nightwish album.


Every now and then, I come across a "Best of" or "Greatest Hits" that makes me laugh. Perhaps the pinnacle of these was when I was listening to a friend's mix and the song I was hearing was cited from the Greatest Hits of Alien Sex Fiend. If you, too, have never heard of Alien Sex Fiend, perhaps you can understand my amusement at them having a Best of compilation album. Finland's Nightwish amuses me to a lesser degree in that regard. Quite popular in Finland and Europe, Nightwish has only leapt the pond for the teen poseur-Goth crowd that enjoys the tiny genre known as symphonic metal. A friend of mine, not a poser, nor a Goth, loves the group and she encouraged me to give them a spin, providing me with two albums to listen to. Sigh. Not since listening to Evanescence's Fallen have I felt like the music I was listening to was trying to be something dark and edgy, yet falling vastly away from that goal.

Highest Hopes - The Best of Nightwish is an esoteric compilation containing sixteen tracks clocking in at seventy-eight and a half minutes. Prior to listening to the album, I had never heard the music of Nightwish and my ultimate recommendation of this album is extraordinarily weak, more a recommend for the novelty of the genre and the feeling that there is something worthwhile here, even if it's not quite my thing.

Symphonic metal, as produced by Nightwish, is a classical music form blended with modern instruments like electric guitars, keyboards and loud drums. The best analogy would be to think of the Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom Of The Opera; stylistically Nightwish's brand of symphonic metal all seems to fall within the range and depth of the songs from that production (ironically, they cover the title track from that production on their album Century's Child, reviewed here!). So, musically, there's a lot of guitars, banging on the drums, and synth sounds that resonate to create music.

Or something resembling music. "Elvenpath," the fifth track on Highest Hopes - The Best of Nightwish becomes chaotic in the instrumentation in its beginning and the drumming is just plain sloppy. This is a shame, because "Elvenpath" strikes me as a song I would like to like; it's a musical retelling tribute to fantasy, including The Hobbit, with lyrics like "At the grove I met the rest - the folk of my fantasies / Bilbo, Sparhawk, goblins and pixies / Snowman, Willow, trolls and the seven dwarves /The path goes forever on." So, Nightwish is not afraid to trend toward the esoteric and weird. This could be music for young geeks, at least of the international variety.

But, as an American geek (admittedly no longer all that young), the music just seems too loud and often indecipherable. Lead singer Tarja Turunen is usually singing in the high soprano ranges being drown out by the instrumentation. Between the volume of the accompaniment, the pitch of her voice and her heavy Finnish accent on tracks like "Bless The Child" (where the title and refrain are virtually the only things completely comprehensible), the music becomes tiresome quickly. Moreover, the album is poorly arranged in that regard. "Bless The Child" and "Elvenpath," next to one another on the album, both utilize similar sampling/male spoken word/chants that make them seem immediately derivative of one another. Had they not been right up next to each other, the technique would have worked nicely. As it is . . .

But at least Turunen has a fabulous voice. When she sings, the songs at least have the sad poetry of her voice to present something, whether it is comprehensible or not. Fortunately, she dominates most of the album with her voice.

Sadly, this is not the case on the entire album. Highest Hopes - The Best of Nightwish was almost tossed right away by me when the album opened with "Wish I Had An Angel," which is vocalized by one of the men in the band. Bad metal transcends continents, apparently. While this catchy tune about "burning angel wings to dust" ("Wish I Had An Angel") may be infectious in its sound, it seems remarkably . . . adolescent. The sentiment, lyrics and tone of the track scream of posturing. But c'mon, badass Finns . . . ?! That's hard to take seriously.

But there is some legitimacy to the album, even when the male-dominated tracks are featured. The cover of "High Hopes" - the Pink Floyd song - is adequate, though it does little new or different with the song. For fans, this track is no doubt nice, as is the superlative track of the album, a new recording of "Sleeping Sun."

"Sleeping Sun" represents something different from the rest of the album, as it focuses on Turunen's clear soprano voice against an accompaniment of softer guitars, gentle drumming and mellow keyboards. In short, we can hear the poetry of her lyrics articulated as opposed to being drown out. And it's beautiful and evocative of great imagery. "Sleeping Sun" has a wonderful operatic quality and if one has never heard symphonic metal, this is the song to impress one as to the legitimacy of the genre. It's musical, poetic, and just plain good.

It's too bad the best track is followed by the pretentious "Dead To The World," which seems like the anthem for posuer-Goths much the way that "Going Under" from Evanescence was when it was released. If it seems like I don't have much to say about the album overall, there is a reason for that (and it's not my disagreeing with my friend's musical choices); all of the songs on the album sound so similar to one another. So "Dead To The World" resonates in exactly the same way as "Wish I Had An Angel" and "Bless The Child" and "Sleeping Sun" bear some resemblance to one another.

The result is a terribly average album that has a sound that is attempting to be big and bold, but succeeds only once or twice on the album. The rest of the time, it's just recycling its own stuff. But hey, if Finland likes Nightwish and they're slowly creeping into one of the subcultures here, perhaps it's worth giving a listen to. I suppose those who like the music of Loreena McKennitt (Parallel Dreams is reviewed here!)and want something different might appreciate this album, though I know one fan of McKennitt's that did not appreciate this disc when I was playing it in the car recently.

The best track is "Sleeping Sun," the low point is the metal jig "Over The Hills And Far Away."

For other intriguing albums, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Tear The World Down - We Are The Fallen
The Dresden Dolls - The Dresden Dolls
One Cell In The Sea - A Fine Frenzy

6/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to visit my Music Review Index Page by clicking here!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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The Blahs Of Symphonic Metal: Nightwish's Century Child!

The Good: Moments of voice, One or two lyrics
The Bad: Most of the music is cacophonous, Obscured lyrics, Repetitive sound
The Basics: In another disappointing musical turn, Nightwish creates a mixed bag of music and noise, obscuring its best lyrics with sound.


Sometimes when listening to a group or album so outside our usual listening preferences, one finds themselves writing more of a commentary on the unfamiliar genre as opposed to staying focused on the sound or evaluation of the specific album. My first experience with symphonic metal, Nightwish's Highest Hopes - The Best Of Nightwish was a review that trended more into the territory of the genre commentary. Listening to the Nightwish album Century Child, I vowed to keep my review more about the specific album than critiquing the symphonic metal genre.

Wow, is that going to be hard!

Century Child, an opera in its own right, was argued - by a fan of the group - to be the best Nightwish album thus far. With ten tracks clocking in at just over fifty minutes, Century Child is an album preoccupied with night and abduction/fleeing.

Okay, here's the bottomline. This is an album that's real difficult for me to muster up a lot of energy and enthusiasm to write a review for. As I listen to it and write - this is my seventh listen to the album - I'm overcome with the sensation that Century Child is an album that tries to be big: it's trying to be big in sound, lyrics, and body. It tries so hard to be BIG, operatic, rockin' and the result is somehow smaller than the sum of all its parts.

First, let's tackle the sound. Nightwish on Century Child is probably supposed to be listened to loud. There are a lot of crescendos, there are emphatic guitar riffs (as I write this, there is a remarkably repetitive chord repetition in "Slaying The Dreamer" playing), and noisy drummings. Farbeit for me to criticize a band with comparisons to legitimate greats, but the drumming right now is annoying me. Percussion can be a powerful musical statement that can sell a risky song as obvious or even safe. When I first heard Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" on The Dance (reviewed here!), I was completely sold on the track by Mick Fleetwood's adept drumming more than the lyrics. The drumming on tracks like "Slaying The Dreamer" plays as more sloppy than professional, less artful and more tactless.

Throughout the album, Nightwish suffers from a failure to live up to conceptual potential. So, for example, on "Forever Yours," a slow, sylvan follow-up to "Slaying The Dreamer," the song never reaches the operatic ballad potential of what it seems to be trying to be. It's too quiet, not insisting on itself enough to entertain or capture the listener enough to believe in the reality of the poetics of the lines.

This brings the music back to the forefront of the problems with "Century Child." Nightwish appears to have degenerated into a multiple personality syndrome with this album where it is unsure whether it wants to be hard and edgy with loud metal clashing like on "Bless The Child" or soft and heartwrenching with tracks like "Forever Yours." The tracks that attempt to negotiate between the two, like "Ocean Soul" fall flat of being either successfully. Indeed, "Ocean Soul" comes across as predictably poppy without any edge.

"Ocean Soul" is a nice example of a failure to have the lyrics match any real musical sentiment. It's hard to take such standard pop rhymes like "Losing emotion / Finding devotion / Should I dress in white and search the sea / As I always wished to be - one with the waves /
Ocean Soul" ("Ocean Soul") when it is accompanied by standard three chord rock guitaring. A soft, sensual ballad - by the lyrics - has its purpose gutted by incongruent music accompanying it. The track that follows, "Feel For You" is perhaps even worse, though most of the musical accompaniment drowns out the vocals.

Lead singer Tarja Turunen has a great voice - as evidenced on the cover of "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Ever Dream" - but it is so often sublimated to the guitars and keyboards that seem to be more preoccupied with the sound than the lines. Sadly, the group's primary male vocalist, Marco Hietala is nowhere near as talented as Turunen and every time he has a front and center vocal is an opportunity missed by the band to use their talent to their best advantage.

For those who are having trouble conceptualizing what Century Child (and the symphonic metal of "Nightwish") sounds like, think Manheim Steamroller or ELO with about fifty percent more volume, twenty-five percent less tune, and vocalists with microphones not calibrated to come close to matching the sound levels of the instrumentals. Century Child only reaches a decent balance on the final track, "Beauty Of The Beast," where there's a nice balance of the lyrics, music and vocals (even Hietala's vocal accompaniment is tolerable here).

But far too often, the album is simply noisy. When I read the lyrics to the songs on the album, I appreciated them more than the sound of the work presented. And, at the risk of being nitpicky, there seemed something cheap and easy about the cover of "The Phantom Of The Opera." Most of the songs on Century Child sound derivative of Webber's rock opera, so it seems simplistic to include the song, like Nightwish was not original enough to conceptualize enough of their own work - to create a full rock opera of their own - to sustain an entire album without dipping into the common troth, as it were.

I don't know who would like Nightwish. My friends who like AFI, opera and metal seem to enjoy it, but even with my diverse taste and range in music, I could not find enough on Century Child to recommend or want to listen to the album again.

The best track is "Dead To The World" which does not put up any pretense and creates a straightout hard-rock song. The low point is "Slaying The Dreamer."

For other impressive female-dominated bands or artists, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Tidal - Fiona Apple
@#%&*! Smilers - Aimee Mann
The Twelfth Night Soundtrack - Hem

3.5/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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