Nightwish Discog Run

A trip through their 25 year career

Nightwish are the world’s foremost symphonic metal band. I’ve been a fan since first hearing Once towards the end of the 2000s. This is my take on their 25 year, 9 studio album discography.

Angels Fall First: Debut albums always seem to either be one of a band’s best or one of the weakest and rarely middling; for Nightwish it’s on the weak side. The album starts well with Elvenpath which is a good song and is followed by Beauty and the Beast which could be really good but doesn’t quite work, partly as Tuomas performs the male vocals and he’s not much of a singer. The same cannot be said for the rest of the album which is pretty poor, culminating in Lappi (Lapland) which is Nightwish’s first multi-movement song, although not a particularly engaging one. Overall a poor album with some terrible lyrics which really isn’t worth listening to after the first two tracks. 3/10

Oceanborn: A favourite of fans but not usually critics; what is certain is that it’s significantly better than their debut albeit with some rough edges and Tarja’s voice sometimes gets lost in the other instrumentation. Oceanborn is largely a Stratovarius influenced power metal album, pretty fast paced and reasonably heavy. It’s a bookended album with the first two and last two tracks being the strongest but really the only song that doesn’t work for me is Swanheart. It’s a really good album and the first indication of the songwriting chops of Tuomas; it’s one I come back to regularly. 7/10

Wishmaster: To me, Wishmaster is not the great album a lot of fans feel it is. Nightwish are usually heavy when at their best and Wishmaster is one of the band’s least heavy albums focusing much more on melodies. Sure the production and composition is much improved from Oceanborn but it largely feels a little flat to me and not as dynamic or impactful as it’s predecessor. Dead Boy’s Poem is an exception to any negativity I have towards the album and is probably the bands first truly moving song. FantasMic is fun (Tuomas loves Disney a lot), Wanderlust and She Is My Sin are good tracks but the rest of the album fails to connect with me. 5/10

Century Child: The band’s first album with a full orchestra and the first with Marko Hietala, both significant developments. This is where Nightwish found their sound, moving away from the power metal tropes of their early material, exploring more complex orchestration and incorporating heavier riffs. The album opens with, to me, the prototypical song of what was to become the band’s own sound, Bless the Child - it’s both heavy and sweet, tough and yet soft and is something that Nightwish are masters of. The album has some excellent tracks including the majestic Ever Dream and the album’s heaviest track Slaying the Dreamer. I like the cover of Phantom of the Opera and the album ends with the epic Beauty of the Beast for a satisfying finale. It’s an album of highs and while there are no outright poor songs, the highs of the ‘new Nightwish sound’ pulls your focus so that it detracts from the whole a bit. Still it’s great. 8/10

Once: Starting with Century Child but being fully the case from here onwards (and to some degree evident on Oceanborn) Nightwish have a particular album template - They’ll write some catchy songs everyone likes and then everything else is essentially whatever Tuomas fancies experimenting with - all Nightwish albums are kind of experimental. Once starts with one of the bands best tracks Dark Chest of Wonders - heavy, beautiful, all the good stuff. Wish I Had an Angel, Nemo and, one of my favourites, Romanticide are all excellent. Experiments: I like the Native American-influenced Creek Mary’s Blood but it does seem a bit too long but the Middle Eastern-influenced The Siren doesn’t quite work for me. Then we come to the epic Ghost Love Score which is nothing short of a masterpiece but it should be the last song on the album; you cannot follow that song which results in the last two tracks on the album getting essentially lost. Once certainly has some of the band’s very best material and is probably the album I would recommend to new listeners but looking holistically it’s great not perfect. 8/10

Dark Passion Play: Starting an album with a near 14 minute epic is bold but for me The Poet and the Pendulum is the band’s best song; it’s about Tuomas’s feeling towards Tarja and her departure from the band - a powerfully stirring song, great from start to finish. The album has a different feel than previous albums; it’s darker, has more folk influences and is vocally different as Anette is a different vocalist than Tarja, less operatic and more of a rock singer. I think a lot of long time Nightwish fans get too caught up on the vocalist change but the songs on DPP were written for Anette, with her vocal strengths in mind and for me the writing on the album is probably the bands strongest, it’s the bands heaviest and lyrically the most personal. All the tracks on the album are excellent, in particular Master Passion Greed, Sahara and Last of the Wilds with only the ballad For the Heart I Once Had not really working for me. As a result I think it’s the band’s best. 9/10

Imaginaerum: Nightwish have always been theatrical to varying degrees and this is the primary driving force on Imaginaerum, it being a concept album. I’ve always struggled to get into the album as a whole as the concept doesn’t really connect with me. It’s the most musically diverse Nightwish album but also the least heavy since Wishmaster and as I’ve mentioned before, Nightwish are at their best with a heavy riff. There are some really good individual tracks like Ghost River, Last Ride of the Day and I really like Scaretale (particularly the vocals) but overall the album just fails to consistently attract my focus. I don’t dislike it but also don’t listen to it in its entirety often. 5/10

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: While Anette leaving looks uncomfortable from the outside, Floor Jansen is the best metal vocalist in the world today and her joining Nightwish is a perfect match. Tuomas described this album as “nine great support acts … one intermission and then the main act” and I think that’s a good way to look at it. The first nine tracks are musically very similar to Dark Passion Play in terms of style although more vocally varied. Shudder Before the Beautiful, Weak Fantasy and the amazing Yours in an Empty Hope are the standouts with Edema Ruh and My Walden being the weaker tracks for me. The ‘main act’ is the 24 minute long The Greatest Show on Earth which tells the story of the evolution of life on earth, narrated by Richard Dawkins (who I don’t particularly like, but this isn’t about him); it’s a fantastic passage of music that really demonstrates what a great composer Tuomas is. A bit like Century Child the highs are very high (probably higher) but there are some weaker moments. 8/10

Human. :II: Nature.: This is Nightwish’s first specific ‘double album’ (if such a concept really means anything in the age of digital music streaming). Starting with disc one; Troy has quite a lot of vocal parts on this album and while he’s a good singer I don’t think it adds anything overall. The issue I have with disc one is that it’s pretty soft - there is no Yours in an Empty Hope style song, no Bless the Child not really even a ‘heavy pop’ song like Amaranth; the riffs are generally lighter than ever for Nightwish and aren’t really compelling. While Noise is good, the only other track I really like is the final track Endlessness which has Marko on lead vocals. Disc two is basically a single song in the vein of The Greatest Show on Earth but instead of being a grand interpretation of the band’s sound it’s essentially a long piece of classical music. Ok fine, but this is not what I come to Nightwish to hear. Is this a bad album? Probably not, but having listened to it many times I find little to nothing that I really like. 3/10

Finally, if I had to order them (we all like a list):

1) Dark Passion Play

2) Century Child

3) Endless Forms Most Beautiful

4) Once

5) Oceanborn

6) Imaginaerum

7) Wishmaster:

8) Human. :II: Nature.

9) Angels Fall First