Let's move on to March now, and check out an album I know Ki has been raving about for the last short while...
Endless Forms Most Beautiful --- Nightwish --- 2015 (Nuclear Blast)
Introduction: Nightwish get a lot of stick, as do many symphonic metal bands, and to be fair I've only heard one or two of their albums, but that sort of thing does appeal to me: bands like Epica, Kamelot, Leaves' Eyes, Edenbridge, all those sort of artistes draw me, and so Nightwish should probably be more on my radar than they are. This is the eighth album in a career spanning almost twenty years, and is their first with new vocalist Floor Jansen.
Note: Unfortunately this is unaccountably not on Spotify, so I have to use YouTube, which I never like doing.
Track by track
1. Shudder before the beautiful: I would say that Jansen is, on the evidence of this opening track anyway, not as strong a singer as Annette Olzon, though the song is the usual gothic Nightwish thing, with solid choruses and strong guitars, rocking nicely. Nothing terribly new about it though. Reserving judgement at this time.
2. Weak fantasy: Despite the title, good strong instrumental start with pounding drums, orchestral keys and that chorus again, then it drops back to allow Jansen to showcase her voice. Passionate, yes, but does she have the chops to replace Olzon? We're still waiting to see.
3. Elan: Nice piano line driving the song, a more restrained song, not quite a ballad but again I feel Jansen's voice needs to be stronger. Maybe that's just her style, but the music seems to be threatening to drown her out much of the time. Good hook in the song. Still nothing that's really made me sit up and take notice. Sort of celtic influence here --- flute or pipes perhaps? Tempo has increased.
4. Yours is an empty hope: More dramatic, with orchestral hits. Then the guitar winds up and the song begins to take flight. Decent vocals but I'm in danger of being really bored already. It just sounds so generic. Play this blind for anyone and I bet there are a dozen like bands they could think were playing. There's just nothing distinctive about it, nothing standing out for me.
5. Our decades in the sun: Guess this is the first ballad. Nice kind of angelic chorus and Jansen's voice suits this sort of song. Yeah it's a nice ballad but I'm struggling to keep my interest at this point. Not looking forward to the closer, which runs for twenty-four fu
cking minutes!
6. My Walden: Oh man I'm so bored! This is gonna take forever!
All right, there's a nice sort of celtic run there at the end, like a reel or something. Kind of woke me up.
7. Endless forms most beautiful: Dramatic, uptempo, same as most of the rest of the album so far. Yawn. Good for what it is, sure, but just so much like everything else I can't be bothered to form an opinion.
8. Edema Ruh: Another nice tune, but again nothing special. Uptempo, good beat, vocal is adequate.
9. Alpenglow: Sorry I've just lost the will to live, or even write anything.
10. The eyes of Sharbat Gula: Oh Christ! A six minute instrumental? Well okay, it's nice and restrained, and the choir is nice. So perhaps not fully an instrumental, depending on how you view choral vocals. It's listed as such though.
11. The greatest show on Earth: Okay then here we go: split into five parts, this is the epic, running for a total of twenty-four minutes exactly. Wake me when it's over. No, seriously. Wake me when it's over. Well now, okay let's be fair: this starts off with a really nice instrumental then we get a quite superb operatic vocal from Jansen, sort of continuing the theme of the opening piece. So far it's actually quite good and I'm engaged. Nice rippling piano. This is the best I've heard on the album. uileann pipes now, with a spoken section, narration of whatever story this is. Evolution of life, I guess, as the album's title is based on a quote from Darwin.
And now the heavier guitars kick in. I've no way of determining which part is which, where one ends and the other begins, but I'm going to guess the instrumental was the first part, the sung part the second and this the third. Could be wrong, of course, but it seems likely. Some sort of animal noises now, against some sort of sound effects which perhaps backs up my assumption about this being about life in all its ... oh, look: Wiki confirms that. Okay then. Certainly the longest track Nightwish have ever done, and in my admittedly uninformed opinion their best. Really like this.
After a few exuberant rounds of “We were here!” there's a rumble of thunder and everything goes quiet, then a soft piano comes through the silence, soon accompanied by a really nice flute I think, or could be Uileann pipes. I think the latter. Some more narration and really powerful, emotional music with a choir adding to the feeling of awe, making me wonder why the rest of the album wasn't like this? Fantastic one to end on though, and I must make sure to watch that video again.
Conclusion: I'm not so sure now. I really thought I'd be saying boring, generic symphonic metal, and for most of the album that accusation is deserved, but then they come up with something like the last track and, rather than having to suffer through it as I expected, I absolutely loved it and it never dragged in the least. I think in fairness I may need to listen to the album a few more times before I can actually rate it, or say what I really think. So for now, as in the first track, I'm going to reserve judgement.