It’s Friday April 22, 2022 at Nokia Arena in Tampere, Finland. Fifteen thousand Nightwish fans await a much-delayed live taste of their heroes’ ninth album, Human. :II: Nature., released as the world shut down in 2020. Anticipation is high. The stage will soon be engulfed in enough fire to obliterate a small village. Aside from a handful of dates in Finland in 2021, this is Nightwish’s first full-scale show in more than three years.
Backstage, Floor Jansen feels like death. In her stage armour she looks fearsome – atattooed Boudica for the modern age. Such a gig wouldn’t normally faze her. Floor, 41, has been fronting metal bands since she was 16. But just now she’s come down with a virulent stomach flu at the worst possible time, and she’s wondering how the hell she’ll get through the next two hours onstage.
“It was unlike anything I’ve ever done,” she says of the stomach flu that almost derailed that post-Covid comeback. “I mean, you get sick now and then, but this was brutal. I don’t know what kind of virus I picked up, but it was a very violent one. I was up all night, and then I still had to travel from Berlin to Tampere. It was horrible.” She shrugs. “But yeah, what can you do?”
It’s not hard to see why Floor gets called a ‘powerhouse’. Part opera singer, several parts rock star – with the dynamism of both – she exudes indestructibility. If Bruce Dickinson had a daughter with Xena: Warrior Princess, it would have been Floor.
