When Nightwish fired their vocalist, Tarja Turunen, there
was a complete outrage amongst the metal community. Although I understand
completely why they would fire an over-egotistical sexy female vocalist, her
voice was most of what made Nightwish’s music so amazing. Now even though I
discovered Nightwish after they had released Dark Passion Play, the first album
I heard by them was their 2004 masterpiece Once which was the last Nightwish
album that Tarja appeared on. I was amazed by Once, and set out to find some of
their other material, but the only albums I could find at the library (which
was where I got a lot of my music at the time) were Century Child and Dark
Passion Play. Yet again, I loved both of those albums. So now that I have been
listening to Nightwish for almost five years, I’ve become extremely familiar
with their music as well as their history. And here comes their long-awaited
2011 album, Anette’s chance to prove that she truly belongs in Nightwish; to
prove that Dark Passion Play wasn’t just a fluke. Turns out that it wasn’t a
fluke.
I’m going to start off with a topic that I bet a lot of you
love getting involved in. Who is better: Anette or Tarja? Tarja is a
classically trained singer, so her vocals tend to have a more operatic sound
most of the time which is what causes the utter beauty and musicality of her
voice. She also has a very unique sound and a wide vocal range. Anette’s vocals
aren’t operatic at all. She has more of a traditional singing style; but she
still is very well in-tune and has a beautiful crisp sound. Also, Anette’s
harmonizations are very clean with a little bit of an edge which is helped with
a wide vocal range that mainly goes to the higher ranges. Notice that I did
nothing but list the qualities and traits of the two singers; I didn’t say
either one was better than the other. Here’s something that you might not have
noticed before: the entire band’s music from when Tarja was singing is a lot
different than the music that backs up Anette.
In all of the albums before Dark Passion Play, the guitars
were very loud and had an extremely dirty and crunchy distortion that sometimes
even overpowered the rest of the band (like in the song Nemo). The music was
faster and more aggressive and the music was also filled with lots of powerful
sounds that come from an orchestra. Tarja’s powerful operatic vocals fit the
music perfectly therefore making her the only vocalist able to sing along with
the older songs and still have the music sound amazing.
In Dark Passion Play, the guitars still have a deep growl
sound, but it’s a much much cleaner distortion. On top of that, the guitars are
turned down a great deal to balance out the rest of the music. The music isn’t
as fast, and has less of an aggressive sound; but still has an unbelievably
amount of power that it puts out. The songs have a more traditional
radio-friendly structure (not necessarily a bad thing) but still have a good
length. The operatic instruments (played on the keyboards by Captain Jack
Sparrow) are turned down a great deal, focusing more on the atmosphere that the
music creates rather than complicated orchestral arrangements to back up the
music. The only vocalist that can sound good with this album is Anette with her
crisp, high-pitched (but still powerful) voice.
What I’m trying to get at is that ever since Wishmaster,
Nightwish has always sounded good, even though they have been going through
several major and minor shifts in their musical style. So neither vocalist is
better than the other because they’re both amazing; just amazing in two
different ways.
So the writing process of the new album was delayed by
resting needs of the band members and Anette’s pregnancy. So the writing
process of Imaginaerum started in late 2010 and was finished fairly quickly.
Unlike their previous album, Nightwish didn’t make constant updates on their
website about how the production and such of the new record was going; they
stayed pretty low for the majority of the process, probably still pretty
exhausted from all the media attention following Tarja’s departure. I’m still
confused about what record label they’re on because on Spirit of Metal it says
that almost all of their albums were released purely under Nuclear Blast, but
when I looked on the Nuclear Blast website, it said that Nightwish was a “former”
artist and that they were on Century Media (Nuclear Blast’s lesser partner).
But then I saw under Nuclear Blast that they were releasing Imaginaerum so I
don’t know it’s too confusing to even bother with it.
Nightwish uses Imaginaerum as an experimental album because they
had been playing the same general sound for about eight years, making several
minor changes in their sound in 2007. But they still needed to show that they
could still be inventive and come up with something new. Imaginaerum is what
they used to explore different musical realms. Throughout the record you hear other
genres and elements being toyed with like folk, jazz, acoustic rock,
alternative, new age, and even some screaming being done by both Anette and
Marco. For those of you that are thinking “SCREAMING?? You can’t be serious!”
Look up the song Ghost River. You also hear a lot more of Marco’s voice than in
any of the other previous albums (probably because of Tarja’s ego and huge need
to be the center of the music).
If you are a music fan at all, you should already know that
there are a few songs out there that put a big huge smile on your face and give
you butterflies no matter how many times you listen to it. You should also know
that these particular specialties are extremely rare. Nightwish has already
come out with two songs that create that kind of emotion in me and those songs are
Dark Chest of Wonders and Amaranth. Well, let me tell you that there is one
song on Imaginaerum that yet again creates that emotion, that song is the one
that has a strong folk metal-induced sound, I Want my Tears Back. When you
listen to this song, the crunchy guitars at the beginning take you back to the “Tarja
Era” to then be sucked into a familiar form of vocal harmonization being done
by the female and Marco that was in I Wish I had an Angel. After that you are
immediately pulled into a melodic power metal sound surrounded and empowered by
the sounds of bagpipes and flutes.
There is one song that was a major disappointment for me and
that is the ballad that comes right before I Want my Tears Back. The song is
beautiful, but the drummer completely ruined it. In this song the drummer uses
those metal brushes on the symbols and snare, and he’s completely lost and out
of time. It just completely ruined it to the point where I just skipped to the
next song. Other than that, this album is a masterpiece that deserves much
credit. Being a true album of creativity and experimentation, Imaginaerum gets
19/20.
I also want to show you what the full picture on the album cover looks like:
No comments:
Post a Comment