PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Finnish metal giants Nightwish have released the musical score to the film ‘Imaginaerum’, the final part of the overall experience that keyboard player Tumoas Holopainen wanted fans to hear. This is also the final album to feature former vocalist Anette Olzon, before she was controversially let go by the band halfway through their current World Tour.
The tracks on the score are reinterpretations of the songs on the album version of ‘Imaginaerum’, and devised by Petra Alanko. The vast majority of are instrumental, and there is only one song that contains Emppu Vuorinen’s distinctive guitar sound, many of them orchestral. However, just like the main album – which in this reviewer’s eyes in nothing short of completely bonkers – the score takes you on a rollercoaster of a journey through highs and lows, and even if you’ve never seen the actual film, you still get drawn into your own epic adventure. That’s the beauty of this soundtrack – it entices the imagination into dreaming up weird and wonderful scenes and pictures, not least during the standout ‘A Crackling Sphere’, which is driven forward by pounding drums and soaring keyboards and leaves your mind needing to catch its breath at the end of it all. Other notable songs are ‘Sundown’, based on ‘Turn Loose the Mermaids’, the eight-minute epic of ‘I Have To Let You Go’ and ‘Orphanage Airlines’, containing Olzon’s powerful vocals that now serve as a haunting reminder to what has come and gone in the band’s career – and, quite appropriately, this adds to the atmosphere of the song and sends chills down the listener’s spine. By the time you come to the soothing sounds of album closer ‘From G to E Minor’, there is a real feeling of bereavement as you are brought back into the real world and normality resumes
Overall then, this is NOT your typical Nightwish album – this is the band showing off their softer and more reflective side, but maintaining the grandeur and majestic nature of their music. And wow, they don’t do it half bad, either. 9/10
Current Nightwish Lineup
Tuomas Holopainen – keyboards, synthesizers
Emppu Vuorinen – guitars
Jukka Nevalainen – drums, percussion
Marco Hietala – bass, vocals
Former members on album
Anette Olzon – lead vocals
Current session musicians
Troy Donockley – uillean pipes, tin whistle, backing vocals
Floor Jansen – lead vocals
Track Listing
1. Find Your Story
2. Orphanage Airlines
3. Undertow
4. Spying In The Doorway
5. A Crackling Sphere
6. Sundown
7. Wonderfield
8. Hey Buddy
9. Deeper Down
10. Dare To Enter
11. I Have To Let You Go
12. Heart Lying Still
13. From G to E Minor
Links
Website: http://nightwish.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nightwish
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/NightwishBand
