I just finished reading Richard Dawkins’ fascinating work, “The Selfish Gene” which makes this next randomly selected album quite fitting, as it is mostly inspired by the theories of Charles Darwin and…you guessed it…Richard Dawkins. A weird and wonderful coincidence indeed…or is it? You decide.
Disc 1836 is…Endless Forms Most Beautiful
Artist: Nightwish
Year of Release: 2015
What’s up with the Cover? It’s evolution, baby! A wide range of creatures that currently (or have ever) walked the earth are arrayed, crest-like, around coil of what I believe is intended to be a strand of DNA.
How I Came To Know It: I’m a Nightwish fan and have been for quite a while. I had not previously explored the Floor Jansen years but finally gave in to temptation and bought this unheard about a year ago.
How It Stacks Up: I have five Nightwish albums. Of those, something had to be last and “Endless Forms…” is it, coming in at number five.
Ratings: 3 stars, although it is more complicated than usual. You’ll have to read on to find out why.
“Endless Forms Most Beautiful” is the debut of Nightwish’s third singer, Floor Jansen, and brings the folksiest feel the band has displayed yet. There are sections of this record that, minus the electric guitar, would be perfectly at home on a Capercaillie record.
Longtime readers of the CD Odyssey will know that this is not a problem for me. I love Capercaillie’s singer Karen Matheson and found it very easy to love Floor Jansen as well, and for many of the same reasons. Her pure power, the light stone-skipping phrasing she employs, providing a new and interesting avenue to appreciate Nightwish’s galloping style of symphonic metal.
If you don’t like your metal to gallop, or you have a problem with flourishes of keyboard or even whole string sections, then “Endless Forms” may not seem most beautiful for you. I loved it, and while this is the least heavy of my Nightwish collection, it makes up for a lack of thump with some of their best melodies yet. If some of them feel borrowed from the Celtic song book – and some do – it is a joyous borrowing, not a pernicious one.
As for subject matter, “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” goes literary on not one, but two axes. Fans of the genre will know that heavy metal is the most likely to do this. We’re a well-read bunch.
The main object of their intellectual obsession is evolution and gene theory. The album literally begins with Richard Dawkins reading a quote aloud on “Shudder Before the Beautiful”.
Nightwish triples down on science on this record in a way typically reserved in metal only for history or sci-fi. It’s a nice third leg to the stool, and the album’s early songs ably convey the grandeur of the natural world. You will simultaneously feel the mystery of genetic reproduction and the awe-inspiring power of nature's majesty.
While a large portion of the record focuses on making science awesome, Nightwish save a little room for fantasy literature as well. “Edema Ruh” is inspired by the Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicle series. Yes, I have read these and yes, they are excellent, although I could use another one. The song is solid enough, but don’t look for it in the “best tracks” section below.
With all this praise, how could the record not climb above the lowly rank of fifth in my Nightwish discography? One reason and one reason only – artistic excess.
Any artist that has been as successful for as long as Nightwish has earned the right (and bank account) to do as they damn-well please. Iron Maiden has been making this a general rule for years (their 2021 album “Senjutsu” is two discs, 81 minutes and most of the songs are 10 minutes long. Yes, it is awesome.
So it isn’t that the final two songs on “Endless Forms…” are long, although they are. It’s that they are boring.
“The Eyes of Sharbat Gula” is a six-minute instrumental mood piece where the highlight is some gentle chanting (hint: a very minor highlight). This is followed by the gargantuan 23 minute “The Greatest Show on Earth”.
Together, they sound like the background music to a nature program (sometimes with animal noises thrown in because, you know, evolution). That’s the good sections. There are long sections that have as much interest as that secondary score that plays over the latter stages of a movie’s credits, where the Oscar-nominated song is over, the main theme’s been played and you’re down to reading the names of the technical crew and learning it was filmed in Georgia (again).
Are there sections within that 23-minute mess that are cool? Yes, and those sections pulled out could make a perfectly serviceable four-minute song. Instead, I felt like I worked for the circus: a few moments dazzling the crowd on the highwire, but the majority of the time packing and unpacking the tents.
Were the final two songs on “Endless Forms…” removed the record would become a tight little nine song, 48-minute collection that easily landed four stars. Instead my zeal slowly waned through the final half of the record as I was subjected to the sad reality that endless forms are not always the most beautiful.
Best tracks: Weak Fantasy, Elan, My Walden, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Alpenglow
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