Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Release date: April 10, 2020
Production: Tero Kinnunen, Mikko Karmila & Tuomas Holopainen
Album length: 81.40 min.
Genre: Symphonic Power Metal
Rating: 8.0 / 10
Five years after »Endless Forms Most Beutiful«, Nightwish are back with their new studio effort, the ninth for the band. The title »Human :II: Nature« hints that the band is once again drawing inspiration from the sorry state of the green and blue planet, which is turning greyer and gloomier by the day. So it’s another wake-up call about humanity’s responsibility, as a creature that’s part of all living things on Earth, for taking on the burden of acts of endless gluttony. Acts, in other words, that have brought the planet to the brink of countless ecological catastrophes (and Earth is already seriously lashing out). Along the way, the album’s messages also dip into the more intimate spheres of our inner lives, like exploring the heart and finding the good in it, because we’re here to do good deeds and there’s good in every one of us, it’s just that the way life works forces us to drag the bad out. We don’t even notice it, but once love, justice and honesty become an illusion you can only find in Hollywood movies, it quickly becomes clear that humans gave up being part of mother nature long ago and now try to tame her by any means necessary. And it’s frankly unbelievable how, in the last 50 years, we’ve managed to drive the planet to the very edge at such breakneck speed.
Okay, let’s blast out of that philosophical intro and get back to the substance of »Human :II: Nature«. Straight up: this is an album that will split the band’s fans into two camps. Nightwish are no strangers to that situation, of course, since when Tarja Turunen left in 2005, plenty of people just flat-out refused to accept her successors. With Floor Jansen coming in, those passions have cooled and settled down, but still. The new album is unlike anything Nightwish have recorded in their career, whether with Tarja or with Anette Olzon, so forget about the short, punchy symphonic power metal anthems that caught fire on first listen and brought the band its everlasting fame.
The band started drifting away from its mold on »Imaginaerum«, then came »Endless Forms Most Beutiful«, where a whole orchestra played alongside them, yet Nightwish still mostly stuck to their tried-and-tested symphonic power metal structures on that one. The interesting thing is that »Human :II: Nature« is a more orchestral album, recorded without an orchestra, than its predecessor. What does that mean? That on the new album Nightwish do it all on their own, and sound more orchestral than the actual orchestra did last time. There’s more. By Nightwish standards, the album is so wildly varied that it even has traces of the progressive about it, easily the band’s most ambitious work to date when it comes to trying “this and that”. And more still. Not so much because of its (once again superior) length, but above all because of the incredible variety in arrangements, production and ideas, that “true-to-the-roots” feeling of this being a metal album is actually slipping away this time. In terms of production, the guitar parts are generally tucked into the arrangements as just one building block of the accompaniment, and guitar phrasing rarely stands out in any of the new songs (one of the few that does is Endlessness). There are plenty of moments where the symphonic (orchestral) elements totally dominate, keyboard arrangements run wild over everything, the folk elements ring out much more strongly, and the vocals are used in a way quite different from what you’d expect. There’s a lot of obsessing over detail in the already ambitious arrangements. The band often throws in a cappella vocals, even narration, and follows the messages of the songs very cleverly, bending the arrangements to fit them.
All of the above already applies to the first of the two CDs, while the second one goes a step further and delivers a completely new musical adventure that would almost fit better on a standalone Tuomas Holopainen studio album. So why is it on a separate CD, and does it work? Yes, like a half-hour movie musical. Fully instrumental and completely neoclassical in its treatment, with Celtic-Irish ornaments woven in. An ode to mother nature, in other words. Even a track like Tribal demanded that new drummer Kai Hahto suddenly sprout eight tentacles, and the band had been prepping its audience for a different album with the singles beforehand, starting with the otherwise excellent Noise. Harvest and Ad Astra pushed the point about big stylistic changes even harder later on. Ad Astra, by the way, is the closing part of an ambitious half-hour instrumental symphony built from several parts, called »All The Works Of Nature Which Adorn The World«.
For everyone who isn’t weighed down by the band’s past work, especially what they made in their first 15 years or so, this artistically challenging undertaking for the band, the new album, could be (in terms of surprise) an out-of-nowhere knockout. With it, Nightwish prove they aren’t worried about reaching for new sounds and structures, which are essential for artistic evolution, even at the cost of sacrificing the very artistic nature that once brought them fame, fortune and greatness.
It’s no surprise that the album was mostly composed by Holopainen. That was expected. What wasn’t expected was that Holopainen would veer so far from the band’s established style, and that the rest of the Nightwish crew would actually let him. For the first time in the band’s career, the other members come across more like extras next to Holopainen, including the limiting of the vocal range Floor Jansen is capable of conjuring, which stays untapped. Surprisingly, the contributions of the newly added Donockley are even more incisive than those of Hietala or Vuorinen. Still, the band embraced Holopainen’s new vision wholeheartedly. All of them listen to very diverse music and test themselves in it with their side projects and bands. Vuorinen’s Brother’s Firetribe or Hietala’s recent solo studio effort are proof enough. And besides, why bite the hand that feeds you?
But given that the band is moving toward a new artistic horizon, they can surely go back at any moment, and probably will one day. For now, though, Holopainen isn’t feeling it and needs more room to stretch out creatively. So it looks like nothing of the sort will happen for quite a while, which means that in the coming years Nightwish will keep filling arenas around the world, first because of their old glory, and only then because of the latest release, an artistic evolutionary leap that’s bold, daring and hugely ambitious in every way, and guarantees high quality throughout. Those of you waiting for a new Nightwish album in the vein of »Oceanborn« or »Wishmaster«, or anything resembling them, will be completely let down this time. But a music lover with a sufficiently “open mind” will recognize and appreciate the high quality »Human :II: Nature« brings.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
CD1.:
1. Music
2. Noise
3. Shoemaker
4. Harvest
5. Pan
6. How’s the Heart?
7. Procession
8. Tribal
9. Endlessness
CD2.: “All the Works of Nature Which Adorn the World“
1. Vista
2. The Blue
3. The Green
4. Moors
5. Aurorae
6. Quiet As the Show
7. Anthropocene (incl. Human Hymn To Nikkal)
8. Ad Astra
Line-up:
Floor Jansen – vocals
Emppu Vuorinen – guitar
Tuomas Holopainen – keyboards, piano
Troy Donockley – uilleann pipes, whistles, bouzouki, bodhran, guitar, lead vocals on track no. 4 (CD1), backing vocals
Marko Hietala – bass guitar, acoustic guitar, lead vocals on track no. 9 (CD1), backing vocals
Kai Hahto – drums
Guests:
Geraldine James – spoken word on “All the Works of Nature Which Adorn the World” (first and last part)
Johanna Kurkela – spoken word on track no. 3 (CD1)
