NIGHTWISH WANT YOU TO CHEER THE FUCK UP
In the otherworldly, milky half-light, the six members of Nightwish stand side by side, backed by a frosted tree-scape. It’s 11am on a January morning in Köngäs, Finnish Lapland, during the polar night. Although the sun rose half an hour ago, albeit tentatively, it will dip below the horizon again in two hours. The temperature is-15°, and after five minutes, not only are the band shivering: the batteries that power the lighting for our photoshoot have started to fail. Pictures are snapped furiously, and moments later the band troop gratefully back inside. “COFFEE!” roars fork-bearded bassist Marco Hietala, rubbing his hands together in relief.
There’s a good reason why Hammer are freezing our nethers off, 150km north of the Arctic Circle. We’ve been invited here for an exclusive listen to Nightwish’s ninth album, Human. :II: Nature., and given there’s always been a Narnia-esque quality to the Finns’ music, this feels like a fitting setting in which to open the next chapter of their fantastical story.
Nightwish’s last album, 2015’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful – their first to feature vocalist Floor Jansen – forced a seismic shift in the band’s career. It turned them into the biggest symphonic metal band in the world, able to package the genre and sell it to the masses. Since then, they’ve become festival headliners, topping the bill at Bloodstock and selling out massive arenas, including Wembley (twice), pitching the band in the same league as Metallica, Rammstein and Slipknot, where a new album release constitutes a proper Event. And now, as the great Nightwish wheel starts to turn once again, it’s time to pull on the thermals and get the lowdown on one of the biggest metal releases of 2020.
“The speakers, among rocking chairs and knitted throws, are two suitably chunky speakers, which it transpires are capable of singling out every twinkling key and hoot of woodwind in the band’s scaturient wall of sound. Granted, it’s impossible to take in a Nightwish album on one listen, but it’s enough to determine this might be the most elaborate thing the band have attempted so far – vast in terms of sound and ambition.
