Dark Passion Play

When Nightwish gave original vocalist Tarja Turunen the boot in 2005, the band could well have ended. Tarja's dismissal was so spectacularly botched with its open-letter nonsense that it resulted in far too much publicity and became a source of embarrassment for all parties concerned, particularly Tarja and keyboardist and band leader Tuomas Holopainen. Fans weren't happy either, with the loss of the voice that effectively defined Nightwish's sound during their first decade.

Two years later, with the new, pop-styled Anette Olzon taking over the vocalist mantle, Nightwish returned with Dark Passion Play. As the title suggests, this is a darker outing than previous records, and the fun-filled power metal full of fantasy odes that filled classics Oceanborn and Wishmaster had long since departed by this point. Opening track 'The Poet and the Pendulum', the customary 'lengthy epic' of the album at nearly 14 minutes long, defines this from the off. On one hand, you have another excellent epic track from Nightwish, one which I've been lucky enough to see performed live in full. On the other, the semi-autobiographical lyrics from Tuomas are not well-written. He had written a similar track before, 'Dead Boy's Poem' on Wishmaster, but it's clear that his ego had grown in the intervening seven years as while the former track was self-expressive, 'The Poet and the Pendulum' falls into the realm of self-indulgence. Several lines are particularly bad, but late on in the song, Tuomas goes so far as to refer to himself by name, in third person.

Ill-conceived lyrical themes do not stop with 'The Poet and the Pendulum'. 'Bye Bye Beautiful' and 'Master Passion Greed' are deliberate swipes at Tarja and her businessman husband, Marcelo Cabuli, respectively. The former song is great, the latter not so much, but the subject matter is unnecessary and serves nothing but Tuomas' need to vent his frustration; all fans will get from take from it is further evidence that Tuomas was indeed in love with Tarja. Thankfully, that's about as far as the lyrical issues go, as the other ten songs serve up relatively standard Nightwish topics.

Musically, Dark Passion Play has a lot to offer. It progresses relatively well from it's dark and gloomy opener through to its folk-laden latter stages. Nightwish clearly thought carefully about the track arrangement, placing the crowd-pleasers 'Bye Bye Beautiful', 'Amaranth' and 'Cadence of Her Last Breath' right after the lengthy opener. 'Amaranth' was always meant to be poppy single material, and unfortunately holds the status of 'that song' where all the Tarja fanboys freaked out at the new vocalist's completely different style.

The closing four numbers finish off the album very well, beginning with the Marco Hietala-penned 'The Islander', in which the fork-bearded bassist/vocalist displays the more tender edge of his vocals, and does so well. Instrumental track 'Last Of The Wilds' sees future full-time member Troy Donockley bring out the uillean pipes in full force, but most importantly, the band sound like they're having good fun throughout the track, a sense of which has gradually declined since the group's first three albums. 'Meadows of Heaven', which explores the memory and loss of one's childhood, is a beautiful closer and proves that Tuomas can indeed write some excellent lyrics when he's not too busy brooding over his former vocalist.

However, there are a couple of issues here. While the first four songs and the last four songs are all well-constructed, the middle section is not so much. Mid-album ballad 'Eva' and the Emppu Vuorinen-penned 'Whoever Brings the Night' are great tracks, particularly the latter, where Vuorinen harks back to the band's early days and shows off some fun, unrestrained guitar work. But 'Master Passion Greed' and 'Sahara' bring little to the table, and 'For the Heart I Once Had' is nice enough but feels too much like a B-side. These three tracks clock in at a combined total at over 15 minutes of a 75-minute album's runtime, and two could have easily been cut. Alternatively, all three could have gone and had 'The Escapist', a considerably better track that somehow ended up as a B-side, come in instead. If an album is going to be 75 minutes long, then it needs to have good reason to be, but Dark Passion Play does not and for the first time since Angels Fall First (1997) we have ended up with a Nightwish album slightly lacking in consistency.

There's also the vocals to consider. I want to make the point out that, while Tarja will always be my favourite Nightwish vocalist, I rate Anette Olzon very highly as a vocalist. She drew far too much ire from too much of the Nightwish fanbase for simply not being Tarja. The issue is that Dark Passion Play was written before she was hired, and it was written with a Tarja-style vocalist in mind. As a result, there's the feeling that Tuomas didn't quite know what to do with her, particularly when he wanted her to hit a particularly high range. 'Sahara' is a good example of this; not the best song on the album by any stretch of the imagination, but her vocals just...don't work on it. Of course, her vocals work fine on other tracks, with 'Meadows of Heaven' being a fine example. That's not to say her poppier vocal style is incompatible with symphonic metal; her vocals worked much better on follow-up Imaginaerum and if that's not enough, anyone who still doubts this should check out The Dark Element. It just feels obvious, in retrospect, that Nightwish's vocalist search didn't yield exactly what Tuomas was looking for, unaware he was months away from Floor Jansen becoming available. Thankfully, he was well versed on how to utilise Marco Hietala by this point, and the Tarot frontman is on fine form here, appearing on over half the album's tracks to add a layer of quality and diversity.

Overall, when Dark Passion Play shines, it does so very well. There are some excellent tracks here that represent Nightwish at their best, with catchy hooks, big orchestrations and that layer of magic that has always run through their tunes. Where it falls short of most of their Tarja-era work is the slightly-unjustified 75-minute runtime, ill-conceived lyrical topics on three tracks mentioned above, and lack of consistency in getting the most out of Anette. It's not Nightwish's best album, but it's certainly not their worst and fans of the band will find plenty to like about this one.

Recommended tracks - 'Bye Bye Beautiful' (despite the swipe at Tarja), 'Whoever Brings the Night', 'The Islander', 'Meadows of Heaven'.