NIGHTWISH
From small acorns mighty oak trees grow. In the summer of 2003, Nightwish made their live debut here in the UK. Four albums, two singers and a little over 15 years later, they can comfortably fill the biggest indoor venues this country has to offer. It’s their second time as bill-toppers here, and arena-headlining status really suits this wonderful, multi-national six-piece, its wellearned benefits – a lush, pristine sound, state-of-the-art staging and pyro; lots and lots of pyro! – bringing to life the otherworldly vision of Tuomas Holopainen in the grandest fashion possible.
Holopainen is a man who has always dared to dream, and his ambitions are paying off handsomely. For more than two hours it’s almost impossible to look away from the action during what singer Floor Jansen calls “A road trip down memory lane.”
The show begins with a theatrical, pre-recorded voice requesting the audience should concentrate on “The excitement, mystery and spectacle of the music,” also requesting: “Turn off that little glass demon, put it somewhere safe and tell it to shut up.” However, of course the plea is studiously ignored, and a sea of phones welcomes Nightwish to the stage.
Troy Donockley deploys the uilleann pipes to tease us with an instrumental snippet of Swanheart, a beautiful piece from the Oceanborn album, before the full band run through a whopping five selections from the era fronted by Tarja Turunen. Of these, Dark Chest Of Wonders and Wish I Had An Angel are meat and potatoes for Jansen, a member of Nightwish for five years now, but the Dutch woman switches up a gear or two to accommodate the operatic feel of Gethsemane (also from Oceanborn), with almost ridiculous poise.
To her right, Holopainen stands imposingly at his bank of keys, radiating the casual, unflappable poise of some long-lost Finnish descendent of Rick Wakeman. Nightwish cannot be considered a progressive band in the strictest sense, but their sheer sense of purity and artistic nonconformity sets them apart from a multitude of gothic-symphonic-metalhead also-rans.
Four years ago at Wembley the band performed The Greatest Show On Earth, their five-suite, 24-minute epic that quite literally questioned how we arrived on this planet, in its entirety. Better still, Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and writer whose work the song had been inspired by, walked on to narrate its conclusion.
With insufficient time on this occasion Nightwish sign off with a slightly truncated rendition of that same grandiose masterpiece, before waving goodbye to the sound of Ghost Love Score, another gem from those distant Tarja-fronted days.
Retinas are left scorched and ears ringing with pleasure. If this isn’t the greatest show on earth, then it isn’t too far off the mark.
“HOLOPAINEN IS A MAN WHO HAS ALWAYS DARED TO DREAM, AND HIS AMBITIONS ARE PAYING OFF HANDSOMELY.”