Nightwish – Endless Forms Most Beautiful special


On Thursday, february 12th 2015, Nightwish was visiting Amsterdam to promote their upcoming album ‘Endless Forms Most Beautiful’. Metal-exposure paid them a visit in the hotel they were staying to have a chat with Marco(see below) and of course to listen to Endless Forms Most Beautiful.

First thing to notice when walking in, was Tuomas wearing a shirt with the head of Darwin on it. As most of you Nightwish fans probably have read somewhere by now, Darwin has been a big inspiration for Endless Forms Most Beautiful. All around me, people are sitting with headphones on their head, looking very concentrated and sometimes writing down notes. After a short wait for an available headphone, it was time for me to start doing the same thing.

The album opens up with Shudder Before The Beautiful and starts with a quote from Richard Dawkins, also a big inspiration for this album. Already from the start of the album on, I get the feeling that I’m listening to Nightwish. The typical sound of the orchestra and choir combined with heavy guitars immediately brings me into the Nightwish flow. Already during the second song Weak Fantasy I totally find myself back in Nightwish their ‘Once’ years. Also this is the first song where we hear Marco sing.

But then Floor starts singing. Floor is probably the best thing that could ever have happened to Nightwish, but for me, being a Dutch metal lover who took the opportunity to see way too many After Forever gigs in her live, it was a bit difficult to get this image out of my head. It was hard to switch the button in my head to ‘the new voice of Nightwish’, because it got stuck at ‘this sounds like a love child made by Nightwish and After Forever’. I have to confess that it took more than half of the album to make this switch.

Meanwhile I was listening to Élan, which all of you heard one day later, because this is the first single from Endless Forms Most Beautifull that Nightwish is bringing out. All I can say that I understand pretty well why they made this their first single. The song is folky and catchy and will reach a lot of people.
Yours Is An Empty Hope is a song that is going to be great when performed live. My notes say: ‘you can’t get it more Nightwish than this’, so I guess that says enough. The song gets pretty rough at the end; did I hear Floor scream there?!

Of course the album can’t be without a ballad, and this is where Our Decades In The Sun comes in. The song starts very lovely and sweet, but after a while some guitar playing passes by. Just when you thought the song would end, it goes on for some minutes into an instrumental ending.

My Warden is a very Celtic inspired song, with a very big and important role to play for Troy and his pipes. Now I am not surprised anymore that I already read a couple of times before that this could almost be a song written by a band like Eluveitie. When I suddenly get a feeling to start dancing, I have to remind myself that I’m sitting in a hotel lobby with headphones on, and not watching a live show.

Listening to title track Endless Forms Most Beautiful and Edema Ruh I can’t get to another conclusion than the fact that Nightwish surely went on, there where they left off with Dark Passion Play and Imaginaerum. The cooperation between the orchestra, the choirs and the band sounds perfect together, and also the balance between the more calm parts and the heavy guitars is just like we know it. Floor her singing is more narrative and Nightwish seems to have let go of the Opera sound.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Alpenglow is going to be the next single that Nightwish is going to bring out. It starts with this typical synthesizer intro, the song is catchy and a bit more up-tempo, and Floor is beautifully telling us a story here.

And then we ‘already’ reach the epic end of this album. Endless Forms Most Beautiful is a 90 minute album, but so far, we’re only one hour further. The Eyes Of Sharbat Gula is an musical intro with only the choir humming, and building up towards the 24 minute finale: The Greatest Show On Earth. This song is of epic proportion, in multiple ways. Of course at first the length of the song. This is Nightwish their longest song so far. The first 6 minutes we calmy carry on where The Eyes Of Sharbat Gula has ended, and we hear the first, and only opera vocals by Floor. But then, with a ‘bang’ suddenly heavy guitars come in. Floor her, already impressive, vocal abilities are used to the max in this song, the orchestra goes wild, as goes the rest of the band. It is like listening to a summary of Dark Passion Play, Imaginaerum and Endless Forms Most Beautifull in just one song. At the end, we slow down again and we listen to words by Dawkins and the sound of a lot of animals. An epic end, of and epic song and album.

P.S: Our camera decided to be a bitch and lose focus when we were recording. We hope that you enjoy the information nevertheless. Cheers!

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