Last night I got to join in the
celebration of my friend Casey’s 50th birthday. I am fortunate to
have a lot of truly great friends, and Casey is one of the best. He’s a man of
honour, intellect and deep emotion. I’m proud to call him my friend.
We also share a lot of the same
musical tastes, although likely not this next album.
Disc 676 is…. Oceanborn
Artist: Nightwish
Year of Release: 1998
What’s up with the Cover? Why can’t all album
covers be this awesome? We’ve got a beautiful woman floating in the sea of some
starlit world. Another world – possibly earth – hangs large in the sky. That
world is simultaneously the eye of some enormous space dragon (that last detail
made you look again didn’t it?). I do
wonder how Water Woman is going to read that message from Owl Post without
getting it soaking wet.
How I Came To Know It: A few years ago I watched Sam
Dunn’s documentary miniseries “Metal Evolution.” The episode on Power Metal got
me interested in Nightwish as well as Helloween. I bought this album as
well as 2002’s “Century Child” the same day from a cool metal store in
Vancouver called Scape Records.
How It Stacks Up: For now I only have those two Nightwish albums, but
I might get more (that groan you heard was Sheila reading this). Of the two, I’d
put “Oceanborn” second best, but still good.
Rating: 3 stars but almost 4
Through the first third of listening to “Oceanborn”
I just wasn’t connecting to it, so I decided to try it drunk. Suddenly it all
made sense. Even the next day, sober again as I walked to work, I was still
keyed in to the majesty of Nightwish.
Nightwish is a symphonic power metal band from
Finland. They’ve got the whimsy of Jethro Tull, the madcap prog organs of Deep
Purple, the neo-operatic vocals of Loreena McKennitt, the metal energy of Iron
Maiden and the incomprehensibly nerdy lyrics of Ronnie James Dio. They are kind of like the London Philharmonic
on speed.
Despite the occasional intrusion of modern metal’s
double-bass drumming, “Oceanborn” is fundamentally melodic. The music soars and
dances around on power chords that are played sharp and precise with a
controlled energy that makes you want to throw your arms in the air and make a
bunch of dramatic gestures, if only to get some of it out of your system.
The musicianship is excellent, but the vocals of
lead singer Tarja Turunen is what puts this band in a class of their own. She
has the chops of an opera singer and classic training to put them to maximum
use. Her voice soar over the arrangements in the same way that Bruce Dickinson
anchors Iron Maiden.
Turunen’s voice is so high and pure that it doesn’t
really matter what she’s singing about, which is a good thing, because Nightwish
loves their overwrought poetry, and “Oceanborn” is no exception.
This is stuff that if I’d heard it when I was fourteen
I would’ve thought it was the height of cool. At forty-four it feels silly, but
in a fun way that speaks to the fourteen year old still inside me. Here are a
few choice lines:
From “Devil
& the Deep Dark Ocean”:
“A snowy owl above the haunted
waters
Poet of ancient gods
Cries to the neverending story
Prophecy of becoming floods.”
Yup – there’s that owl from the cover again. At
least we know what his deal is, although I think a prophecy of coming floods would have made a lot more
sense.
Here’s an excerpt from “Sacrament of Wilderness”:
“Dulcet elvenharps from a dryad
forest
Accompany all charming tunes
Of a sacrament by a campfire
A promise between the tameless
And the one with a tool
Tonight the journey from a cave
begins.”
Like Ronnie James Dio before her, Turunen manages to
sing this bumpf with enough power and passion that it almost makes sense.
Unfortunately, a couple of tracks feature guest
vocalist Tapio Wilska (from the band Sethian) singing a few verses alongside
Turunen, metal-duet style. “Devil &
The Deep Dark Ocean” and “The Pharaoh
Sails to Orion” both feature his guttural fantasy-rap stylings. These are bad
to begin with, but matched against Turunen’s vocal chops it is painful to listen
to.
The album gets better for me as it goes along, but
that could just be me getting more immersed in the emotion of it all.. You
might think it was the liquor talking, but I gave it a full sober second listen
this morning. I still preferred the middle and end of the record where songs
like “Passion and the Opera” and “Swanheart” create beautiful layers of
sound, ranging from Celtic to classical to heavy metal in a single song without
ever straining to do so.
My copy of “Oceanborn” was a 2007 reissue with both
the two extra songs on their Japanese release (“Sleeping Sun” and “Nightquest”)
as well as a few live tracks.
The live tracks are mostly forgettable, but both “Nightquest” and “Sleeping Sun” are worth having. “Sleeping Sun” is a crooning ballad that drags your yearning heart
through a darkness so romantic you want to marry it. The song also has some of
the prettiest guitar work on the record, slower but more full and emotional.
“Oceanborn” is an odd mix of styles, and it isn’t
for everybody, but if you’re like me and prefer your metal melodic and full of bat-shit
crazy storytelling, it is worth checking out.
Best tracks: Stargazers, Sacrament
of Wilderness, Passion and the Opera, Swanheart, Sleeping Sun
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