NIGHTWISH PUT THE PEDAL TO THE FLOOR (October 2013)

The symphonic Finns would strike gold with singer number three. World domination looked inevitable

It took Nightwish keyboard player and leader Tuomas Holopainen 10 months to formally offer Floor Jansen the job of singer in 2013. His heel-dragging was understandable: the tenures of her two predecessors, Tarja Turunen and Anette Olzon, had both ended in acrimony, and they needed to be sure they got it right this time. But looking back today it seems certifiably insane that the symphonic metal kingpins would even consider anyone else.

The former After Forever/revamp singer was at her sister’s wedding in October 2012 when she got an emergency call asking if she could step in and help out on a US tour on a strictly temporary basis. She arrived for her first gig in Seattle a few days later to find a band in disarray. “At that point it was really, ‘How are we going to make this work?’” she told Hammer in 2015. “I certainly didn’t think, ‘Well, now I’m the new singer of Nightwish.’” Floor was properly offered the job full-time in the bar of a hotel the following summer, after headlining a show in the Finnish city of Tampere. “I laughed, I cried… and then I couldn’t say anything to anyone,” she recalled.

This no-brainer decision was borne out with 2015’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful. Floor’s debut with Nightwish was a high watermark for both the band and the entire symphonic metal genre. Just as importantly, it seemed to have lent the group some muchneeded stability after their revolvingdoor approach to singers. Maybe that 10-month probation period wasn’t such a bad idea after all.