CD Odyssey Disc 1836: Nightwish

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

CD Odyssey Disc 733: Nightwish

I’m back from the gym and ready to have a quiet evening, but before I do let’s celebrate some music that is anything but quiet.

Disc 733 is…. Century Child

Artist: Nightwish

Year of Release: 2002

What’s up with the Cover? Behold the grotto of heavy metal awesomeness, in all its purplish waterfall glory (more on that later). A mysterious grotto nymph in a short skirt makes this cover even better. Here is a poster destined for the walls of teenage boys

How I Came To Know It: As I noted when I reviewed “Oceanborn” back at Disc 676, I discovered Finnish metal artists Nightwish via a documentary series by Sam Dunn.

How It Stacks Up:  I have two Nightwish albums. I like them both about equally, but I’ll put this one slightly out in front.

Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4

Nightwish is modern power metal in all its ridiculous glory. Double bass drums, soaring violin sections and operatic vocals singing about far away fantasy lands that Ronnie James Dio would be proud to call home.

“Century Child” is a bit more accessible musically than “Oceanborn” but just as bat-shit crazy. Walking around town with music like this is like being the star of a heavy metal Broadway musical. On the walk to work this was a glorious way to start my day. In the afternoon, however, I had to run a bunch of annoying errands.

First was a trip to the pharmacist. Waiting in line to fill a dental prescription doesn’t really go with the Nightwish vibe; less so when you find out you were in the wrong line and have to take five steps to the right and start all over again. Later, I bought hair product. It just didn’t make me feel centre stage, which is what this music needs. Instead of being in a heroic fantasy epic, it felt more like a farce.

Which is too bad because this is inspiring music in the right situation. For example, driving down the highway, hair flying in the wind as you keep left and curse the fools in front of you that won’t keep right. Or walking home on a stormy winter night and reveling in the lightning crashing above the city streets.

The biggest selling feature to these songs is lead singer Tarja Turunen. Her voice is opera-singer strong and it soars over the heavy metal riffs of these songs like a dark avenging angel. There is no greater proof of Turunen’s vocal prowess than that she can take lyrics like this:

“I was born amidst the purple waterfalls

I was weak, yet not unblessed

Dead to the world

Alive for the journey”

And make it feel like something important is happening. Give her anything even remotely emotionally evocative to sing, like this from “Ocean Soul”:

“Should I dress in white and search the sea

As I always wished to be – One with the waves

Ocean Soul”

And she’ll have you wishing you can swim out the sirens and dash your brains on the reefs.

Because of Turunen's talent, when Marco Hietala sings alongside her, the overall effect can feel awkward. He wants to play dark and demonic against her mysterious and majestic, but it isn’t a fair fight. He comes off more like drab gray and mildly annoying.

Inexplicably Nightwish decides to cover “Phantom of the Opera” near the end of the album. Turunen has the chops for it and they play it well, but despite it being a heavy metal version, it just sounded to me like a crunchier but otherwise unimaginative version of the musical number. Then the album ends with a ten minute medley of tracks under the overarching title “Beauty of the Beast.” Together, these two tracks cause the album to peter when it could have gone out with a bang.

My jewel case for this album is for the 2007 re-master, with four bonus tracks but the store made a mistake and gave me the regular version. I was actually happier not to have all the extra stuff (three of the five tracks are live or alternate versions of songs already on the record) so this was one of those times when less was more.

Overall this album is OK in the right environment. Walking home late at night and a little bit drunk during a thunderstorm – you can’t do better; waiting in line for prescription mouthwash, not nearly as ideal.

Best tracks: End of All Hope, Forever Yours, Ocean Soul, 

CD Odyssey Disc 676: Nightwish

Last night I got to join in the celebration of my friend Casey’s 50^th 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