WHAT’S NEXT FOR NIGHTWISH?

Tuomas Holopainen on the creative feast and famine of Finland’s biggest music export.

“After we finished Endless Forms Most Beautiful, I felt bland – I just didn’t feel like doing anything for Nightwish,” confides Tuomas Holopainen.

It seems unbelievable, but after two decades of riding on the crest of a creative wave, the composer hit a dry patch. So it’s a relief to learn that after a two-year barren period, the ideas have come flooding back.

“It’s a really funny thing and I can’t explain what happened, but to the day that Auri finished [the album], all the floodgates opened and I felt really enthusiastic about starting the next Nightwish album,” he reveals. “Since late September/early October, I’ve just been immersed in the new Nightwish album. I have the basic ideas for six songs at the moment and a whole bunch of ideas for songtitles and lyrical themes. I’m feeling very excited about it for the first time in three years and it’s brilliant.”

Holopainen has already reserved the band’s rehearsal space in the Finnish countryside for next summer. If all goes to plan, the new studio album should drop in early 2020. But before all that, there’s a tour to complete.

Decades celebrates the band’s career so far and is centred around the recent ‘best of’ compilation of the same name. Just as the double album tracks the band’s career in reverse chronology from Endless Forms… to their first demo, the setlist chronicles 22 years’ worth of material, with live visuals from long-standing cover artist Janne ‘ToxicAngel’ Pitkänen.

“It was surprisingly easy choosing the tracks for the album,” says Holopainen. “I spent a day listening through all the songs. It was the first time I’d ever done that and it was a lot of fun listening to the first albums. It was like, ‘I remember that kid!’ In a way, I miss that kid but I’m happy that we’ve evolved to what we are.”

Nightwish head to Europe in May. They headline Bloodstock in August, with more UK shows expected. “It’s reassuring but a bit scary when you know what you’re going to be doing with your life for the next eight years,” says Holopainen. “But I kind of like the fact that I know what’s going to happen.”