Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Nightwish
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: 2011
Runtime: 74:56
Rating: 4.3/5
“Imaginaerum” is the most ambitious and eclectic-sounding studio effort from Finland’s Nightwish to date. The band’s seventh studio album in all, it took shape alongside the concept of a script for the film of the same name, a Canadian-Finnish production backed by the Finnish government with more than half a million euros out of the state budget. The man who wrote the script is, of course, Nightwish mastermind Tuomas Holopainen.
While the film hasn’t had its official premiere yet, Nightwish have built their new album entirely around the chosen concept. It works like a “musical”, or to put it more simply, the band has pulled off bringing the concept to life. It reads perfectly logically, since the music from the album is also part of the film’s accompaniment (its musical backbone). The story concept isn’t exactly a revolutionary stroke of genius. It follows the last hours in the life of a severely demented old composer. Sinking deeper and deeper into his coma, the traces of his adult life fade away, along with his ties to family and everything he experienced as a grown man. His mental absence sucks him into an imaginary parallel world, shaped like a child’s fantasy, and the man responds to his surroundings only as a 10-year-old boy. His daughter, who spends the last hours with her father, loses touch with him, but by the end of the story she realizes that if she wants to meet him again, she’ll have to set off on his last adventure and unravel his mystery.
This time Holopainen really thought of everything. He turned every idea for the new album over and over until he’d polished the expressive optimum out of it. That’s why “Imaginaerum” is a hugely varied record, which also makes it a richly and intricately arranged one. A whole bunch of “outside” musicians guest on it. From a philharmonic orchestra to a choir, a whole array of wind players and extra percussion, and of course the indispensable Troy Donockley with his folk gear, which takes in bouzouki, whistles, bagpipes,… To arrange all these co-builders of the sound and expression of the new Nightwish album just right, Tuomas needed plenty of time to wring out the expressive essence of every single track. The essence of Nightwish, for those of you who may have forgotten, is combining the elemental punch of symphonic power metal with classical music. A better coexistence of all the building blocks, and a more effective collision of metal elements with classical music than the one “Imaginaerum” captures, is hardly possible anymore. In the Nightwish musical “groove”, that is.
There’s a big money machine standing behind Nightwish. The goal of such an ambitiously conceived project was certainly easier to reach than it might seem. It’s simple. Nightwish cultivate a musical approach backed by people with money who are happy to put it into Nightwish, because they’ll get even more back out of it. We’re talking about a success story and a financial investment that’s been proven safe in advance. Classical music, then, and the Western world. A wide generational spread is united under the Nightwish fan base. From milk-toothed kids who met Nightwish before they ever got to Slayer, to schooled music professors who can’t stand any “weird” experiments that would in any way smell of an avant-garde, provocative unveiling of new, undiscovered musical dimensions outside the frame of classical templates. After all, this well-funded machinery behind Nightwish has just created and released four computer games (compatible with your cell phone, among other things) tied to the new Nightwish album and film, to boost the album’s promotion, which of course borders on mild fanaticism. Nightwish are thus a firmly established company today, one a lot of people profit from.
But what matters is creative ideas! Only that counts. And this time there was no shortage of effective musical solutions. The opening Taikatalvi is a rare move for the band. It’s an instrumental intro. Something a concept like this simply needs, with narration in Finnish, which is also not a common move for the band. It suddenly but predictably cuts straight into the bombastic, punchy Storytime (also released as a single). A track of solid compactness, with an effective, gradual build-up of atmosphere and a “crescendo” in an excellent chorus melody, it’s one of the catchiest songs on the whole album. I Want my Tears Back, Rest Calm and Last Ride Of The Day grab you just as hard with their lead melodies as Storytime does.
Sadly, Storytime already confirms that Anette Olzon is too weak a vocalist for Nightwish. Even if she sounds more assured and confident than on her contribution to “The Passion Play” (2007), and even though the girl undeniably tries hard and shows she has talent, skill and feeling, her voice lacks that charismatic charge, that necessary dot on the “i” that many female vocalists in symphonic power metal have. This isn’t about Tarja’s absence anymore; it’s about any female voice that has a recognizable added depth of expression, which only comes from a distinct personal character, and that, sadly, Anette doesn’t have. The timbre of Anette’s voice is totally ordinary, the kind you’d find on the street the moment you meet the first girl. On top of that, her use of English in the verses sounds a bit clumsy. The band will have to seriously consider a second vocal character in the lineup. No. Anette Olzon is not a bad singer, she’s just too slight a figure for Nightwish. Luckily this album is very varied, and Marco Hietala is often involved as an equal or even dominant lead voice, so this minus on the female vocal side is at least partly “covered up”.
The album fully takes off after the track Ghost Rider. Slow, Love, Slow is a surprising experiment in merging jazz and blues rhetoric with Nightwish’s classicism, and it’ll feel familiar to those of you who know George Gershwin’s Porgy And Bess. It ignites, and that’s what counts. Right after it the album explodes bombastically again in the excellent I Want My Tears Back, a candidate for the album’s second single. The song develops as an equal vocal duet between Anette and bassist Marco Hietala, then midway turns into a typical folk romp, where extra violins, whistles and additional percussion join the Nightwish sound. Scaretale revives the icy breath of tragedy from Ghost Rider, developing a similar combination of a “Metallica” riff dressed in orchestral arrangements as in Storytime, while its central operetta-folk section, propped up on a polka rhythm, grabs the attention. The second half is highlighted by the excellent acoustic The Crow, The Owl, The Dove, with gorgeous melodic solutions in the lead lines and an effective vocal duet between Marco and Anette. After it, Last Ride Of The Day lifts the album back up to the metallic wind-up of the opener (Storytime). It’s a song with an ignitingly seductive chorus melody that, given the concept, simply has to be in this spot, because right after it comes the album’s most complex creation, Song Of Myself, built from many tempo changes, lead motif switches and shifts of mood. It develops with a touch of unpredictability, yet the band never loses the red thread in the arrangement, and this mini epic suite, with the highly vibrant dramatic mood it manages to build, is in itself the peak of “Imaginaerum”. The album closes with an instrumental that brings together the lead motifs of all 12 preceding tracks, written in a purebred classicist posture. It serves as the musical backdrop for the end of the film, when the closing credits roll.
“Imaginaerum” is certainly the highest-quality album of Nightwish’s career in terms of the level of compositional maturity reached. The band has once again managed what it’s most valued for. Combining metal with classical music in equal shades, in ideal symbiosis. The album also sounds very organic, as it was recorded without synthesizers, only with the help of a choir, a philharmonic orchestra and additional guest musicians who just play, pluck strings, blow into their chosen instrument or simply clap their hands.
If “The Passion Play” was a very cautious album with which Nightwish were mainly looking for affirmation of the right path after the shipwreck with Tarja, then “Imaginaerum” is a necessary developmental step that Nightwish took at just the right moment, since with it they climbed one rung higher. They kept all their recognizable trademarks and proved they can put out their very own “The Wall” (especially if you count the film too) or their own “A Night At The Opera”. Though of course with nothing of revolutionary, pioneering proportions.
Sadly, the album can’t fully develop the moods and impressions it’s after! Sadly because of the absence of a real, charismatic vocal that would breathe into the arrangements that much-needed touch of fully convincing atmosphere, the kind that sucks you in at full tilt on the adventure of the chosen concept. And yet, it works even without that. Not perfectly, but in practice it stands as the band’s most interesting, most boldly provocative and, in compositional terms, most mature achievement of its career. With this bravely measured step, Nightwish held on to a recognizable, intoxicating dose of highly melodic listenability alongside the eclectic stance of the new album. So this album should be interesting even for all of you who, after Tarja left Nightwish, struck Nightwish off your list of bands whose new releases you follow regularly. And that’s surely worth something, isn’t it?
Lineup
Anette Olzon – vocals
Tuomas Holopainen – guitar, piano
Emppu Vuorinen – guitar
Marco Hietala – bass guitar, vocals (tracks 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12 )
Jukka Nevalainen – drums, percussion
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Troy Donockley – bagpipes (on tracks 5 & 13), whistles (on tracks 1, 8 & 10), backing vocals (on tracks 10 & 12), bodhran, bouzouki
Dermot Crehan – whistle
Dirk Campbell – sorna
Guy Barker – trumpet
Paul Clarvis – percussion
Stephen Henderson – percussion
Pekka Kuusisto – violin
Choir “Metro Voices”
Orchestra: The London Philharmonic Orchestra
Pip Williams – orchestral arrangements for choir and orchestra
Production
Tuomas Holopainen
Tracklist
1. Taikatalvi (2:35)
2. Storytime (5:22)
3. Ghost River (5:28)
4. Slow, Love, Slow (5:50)
5. I Want My Tears Back (5:07)
6. Scaretale (7:32)
7. Arabesque (2:57)
8. Turn Loose the Mermaids (4:20)
9. Rest Calm (7:02)
10. The Crow, the Owl and the Dove (4:10)
11. Last Ride of the Day (4:32)
12. Song of Myself (13:37)
13. Imaginaerum(6:18)
