Shudder Before The Beautiful • Weak Fantasy • Élan • Yours Is An Empty Hope • Our Decades In The Sun • My Walden • Endless Forms Most Beautiful • Edema Ruh • Alpenglow • The Eyes Of Sharbat Gula • The Greatest Show On Earth (i. Four Point Six, ii. Life, iii. The Toolmaker, iv. The Understanding, v. Sear-Worn Driftwood)
Spotify ♪ YouTube
Submitter's note included under the break due to length.
This album is the first album made with their current and third singer and first without their previous drummer who had to retire due to severe insomnia and is themed around science and reason to constrast the previous album about fantasy.
The latter part of the album quotes passages from Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins. One of their live shows even had Richard Dawkins as a guest and he read live for their insane 21 minute track 'The Greatest Show On Earth' which is a song about evolutionary history.
The album is intended by the songwriter Toumas Holopainen to be listened to beginning to end like a movie.
The band camped out in an isolated cabin to write this album.
They also got a crab "Tanidromites nightwishorum" AND a prehistoric rockshelter (Alpenglow Rockshelter) named after them/their songs for this album.
The band:
Nightwish is a Finnish symphonic metal band that started in 1996 that has had three different lead singers over its run, with the first (Tarja Turunen) parting ways with the band in a very public and emotionally fraught friend breakup in 2005 that to this day causes divisive fights in the fanbase about the decision between the really old fans and the newer ones. Their current lead singer and the one for this album is Floor Jensen, a classically trained dutch singer who joined in 2015 and has incredible range. They are one of the most successful Finnish bands.
Their songs contain repeating themes of wonder at the natural world and wanting to return to innocence/childhood, but may broach a variety of topics.
Songs not on this album you might know them from:
End of All Hope - Song used a lot in amvs on youtube.
Wish I Had An Angel - biggest US hit single
Amaranth - got very popular in Europe as a single
Ghost Love Score - The live version with Floor instead of the album version with Anette (the second singer) is fairly popular on youtube. This is a song that most fans start with as its a good introduction to Nightwish's current style without being too isoteric.
Interesting song notes:
In 'Yours Is an Empty Hope' that is indeed Floor doing the super low death growls. Marco is the one singing clean. Yes really.
Alpenglow is considered the "ultimate Nightwish song" by Holopainen.
The Greatest Show on Earth is the longest song this band has recorded to date, includes quotes by Dawkins and Darwin, and includes homages to music history with excerpts from Dies Irae, Minuet in G major, Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 by Bach and Enter Sandman by Metallica. Holopainen considers this song their most ambitious song to date he says the song "is probably the culmination of everything that we've done together".
Personal notes: AAAAUUHGHGHG This band makes me insane. They make a song an atmospheric experience. Most bands are not great live- they are better live. Somehow. They have incredible stage presence. This album is my favorite Nightwish album and probably my favorite album of all time.
Note: I have been aggressively listening to classical music since I was like seven maybe and have very little clue what is actually well known. Mostly just curious to see what peoples options on classic music is because it's a genre I quite like.