Tuomas Holopainen got the idea to form Nightwish while fulfilling his national service in the Finnish army. His plan was to create an acoustic band to make ‘campfire music’. Luckily for metal, he soon realised a life of singing Kumbaya was a fucking terrible idea. Even more fortunately, his service was spent in the military band, playing clarinet and saxophone rather than undertaking intensive weapons training or going out on manoeuvres.
“I didn’t have to play around with guns or any of that nonsense,” he says. “There was a lot of free time during the evenings, so I got permission to go to the rehearsal room and play the piano and keyboard. During those months, I composed all the songs for the debut.”
Symphonic metal was barely a stirring of strings at the start of the 90s. Sure, metal had flirted with classical music – Black Sabbath had used strings and piano back in 1972 on while the likes of Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride and Celtic Frost had found ways to use orchestral instruments in extreme metal. But beyond bands such as
