Nightwish - Dark Passion Play: The Review

Towards the end of last week I downloaded a promo copy of Nightwish's upcoming album, Dark Passion Play, and have spent the weekend and the last couple of days listening to it. My conclusion: it's a good album, but it's not as good as I expected, not as good as Once and not as good as they are capable of. One of my main complaints is the lack of bombastic orchestral lines which made Once so brilliant. Moments such as the orchestral part of the intro to Dark Chest of Wonders and elements of Ghost Love Score are surprisingly lacking here. The fact that the album is so dark in comparison to the uplifting sound of most of the previous albums also makes it an unusual and different experience.

On the plus side, there are no problems with new vocalist Annette; she has a good voice and performs well in many of the songs. No criticisms there.

Below is a brief track-by-track analysis:

THE POET AND THE PENDULUM - Songwriter Tuomas billed this as his best ever song. I think it's good, but not great. The intro is exceptional and as good as anything on Once. The first four minutes in general are very good. After that, it's a bit hit-and-miss. There's a really cool dramatic violin part about seven minutes in, but apart from that it's nothing special. Also, the last four minutes of the song (which is fourteen minutes long in total) are a guitarless ballad, which to me seemed unnecessary. A good song, but not everything I thought it would be.

BYE BYE BEAUTIFUL - A song very much like Wish I Had An Angel, with a slight techno edge and bassist Marco singing the chorus. At least as good as WIHAA, maybe better.

AMARANTH - The first single. Catchy. One of the few happy songs on the album.

CADENCE OF HER LAST BREATH - The third fairly straight song in a row; much darker and heavier than I expected. Slight nu-metal influences. Another "good but not great" song.

MASTER PASSION GREED - A very angry, heavy song with some surprisingly blunt lyrics. It doesn't have as much headbanging appeal as Romanticide or Slaying the Dreamer, though, and the structuring is rather random; it jumps about between different parts haphazardly and messily, and some bits are totally unnecessary. Could have been better, but did have a cool orchestral bit at the end that reminded me of James Bond.

EVA - Your typical rock ballad. A nice song, nothing more, nothing less.

SAHARA - One of the best intros on the album, which goes on for much longer than you expect. Egyptian-themed, but not as obviously so as Tutankhamen from their first album.

WHOEVER BRINGS THE NIGHT - This song was written by guitarist Emppu, and is a fairly straight rocker with a dark edge. His songwriting inexperience shows through as this is one of the album's weaker efforts. The vocal parts are decent but there is no real good instrumental/guitar work to hold the interest.

FOR THE HEART I ONCE HAD - The straightest, poppiest song on the album; a typical gothic rock track.

THE ISLANDER - Written by Marco, this is a catchy, folky acoustic track reminiscent of Jethro Tull.

LAST OF THE WILDS - An awesome instrumental and one of my favourite tracks on the album. Riverdance with electric guitars. Celtic instruments vs. guitar solos. Exceptionally good fun.

7 DAYS TO THE WOLVES - An epic and powerful song with a good guitar solo and bridge instrumental section. Perhaps the ending goes on for a bit too long but this is a minor criticism.

MEADOWS OF HEAVEN - A soft ending to the album. The first few minutes are fairly nondescript but towards the end the guitars and orchestra blend with a gospel choir to produce a powerful climax.

In summary, this is a good album. It's just not a brilliant one, and not one that matches up to the, admittedly very high, standards Nightwish set for themselves with Once. The removal of the bombastic orchestras is somewhat puzzling since the orchestra for this album was bigger than the last one. But I recommend listening to it a few times before you make any final judgments. It grows on you.