Once

At least until their next album/movie comes out next year, Nightwish is slightly in danger of being a one-album band to me. (Which makes it all the more impressive that they're my fifth-favorite band) But their penultimate album, Once, is impressive in its own right; it just has the misfortune of being vastly overshadowed by its successor. Musically, it's the previous step in Nightwish's gradual transition from their earlier folky style to their current theatrical bombast. Also of note, it's their last album to feature their beloved original vocalist Tarja Turunen, and a fine job she does.

Like Dark Passion Play, Once was recorded with the assistance of a full orchestra. The opening track "Dark Chest of Wonders" is possibly the quintessential Nightwish song, with roughly an even mix of pounding metal aggression and symphonic flourishes. Far from the best song on the album, but it showcases their distinctive style quite well. The rest of the album has the band drifting all over the metal/symphonic spectrum--there are some slower-paced orchestral songs, and some truly metal ones. The single track "Nemo" is a good example of this, kind of the spiritual predecessor to "Amaranth". "The Siren" has a middle-eastern sound remeniscent of "Sahara" (I'll try to stop comparing the album to Dark Passion Play now) and "Higher Than Hope" is a slow, majestic finish to the album. "Kuolema Tekee Taiteilijan" ("Death Make An Artist") is both entirely orchestral, with no metal instrumentation, and sung entirely in Finnish, both fine in my book. The epic "Creek Mary's Blood" is pretty neat, contrasting quieter parts with loud, mostly instrumental sections and cool tribal chanting. The song ends with Native American musician John Two-Hawks reading a poem in Lakota; very cool indeed.

The album has fewer really metallic tracks, but they are generally good. "Planet Hell" starts off with a choir chant and string intro that builds tension that is promptly annihilated by the heavily distorted main guitar riff exploding onto the scene. It is an example of the "beauty and the beast" style of metal in two ways: Tarja's singing versus Marco's snarling, and the melody of the orchestra and keyboard versus the ultra-heavy guitar. "Dead Gardens" is similarly heavy and riff-based, but it loses points from me for its outro. Okay, playing the same three-note riff for the last 50 seconds and then ending abruptly a la Dream Theater is interesting musically, but it sounds kind of annoying, at least to me. "Romanticide" touches on a bit of alternative metal in its outro. "Wish I Had An Angel" is heavier, but also takes some cues from industrial/electronic dance music, a bit like "Bye Bye Beautiful" (sorry). Like "Planet Hell", it also features Marco's half-screaming, half-singing prominently, of which I heartily approve.

And finally, "Ghost Love Score", which like "The Poet and the Pendulum" deserves its own paragraph. The epic choir at full blast joins the orchestra for an intro that already sounds like the climax of many an epic fantasy tale. Things get even better when the band joins in, before transitioning to a quiet verse of Tarja's ethereal vocals. Then the chorus, sung by the choir and recalling epic soundtracks like "Duel of the Fates" and "Neodämmerung" from The Matrix in its bombast. After a few verse-chorus repetitions, a lesser song might call it quits. But no, not "Ghost Love Score". It transitions to a quieter, slow midsection with a nice, leisurely guitar solo, which fades out as the orchestra takes over. It slowly builds in intensity before the rest of the band comes back for several of the most epic minutes in music, period. If it were the soundtrack to a movie, it would have to feature Gandalf and Darth Vader as super saiyans, dueling for the fate of the universe on the crow's nest of the Black Pearl during a curse-powered storm for the fate of the universe as the sun expands and threatens to engulf the earth, all in the fourth level of an Inception-style dream. Since no movie nearly this awesome exists, this video comes closest to properly accompanying it. Finally, the epic chorus just repeats until the song fades out around the ten-minute mark. Now that is real music.

If you haven't heard Nightwish before, listen to Dark Passion Play. Now. If you like the sound of Nightwish (reborn or otherwise), Once should certainly be your next stop in their catalogue. Get excited for Imaginarium next year!