Dark Passion Play
Anette Olzon does not need to sound like her predecessor on Dark Passion Play. Her lighter, more pop and rock based voice gives Nightwish a different colour, while the band continue working with heavy guitars and huge orchestral arrangements. On this 2007 album, the main change is how the singing fits between those instruments. The appetite for drama remains as strong as ever.
The Poet and the Pendulum makes that clear immediately. The opening piece runs for almost fourteen minutes, moving between quiet passages and heavy outbursts. The orchestra helps direct the music, making its sections more than a collection of riffs. Still, the opening demands patience. Not every new turn quite justifies the time it takes to arrive.
The shorter songs make the new lineup easier to understand. Amaranth gives Olzon a melody well suited to her direct delivery. Bye Bye Beautiful keeps the energy high and shows that a different voice need not reduce the band's force. Eva puts her further forward, with less opportunity to hide inside the enormous sound. It also makes her different approach to the music especially clear.
The Islander offers a welcome change. Acoustic guitars, whistles and percussion create a folk setting, with Marko Hietala taking the lead vocal. Its smaller scale works particularly well beside the symphonic activity elsewhere. Nightwish clearly do not need to fill every available space to establish a mood.
Length remains the biggest drawback. The number of ideas is impressive, but the album cannot hold your attention equally well throughout. A tighter selection would have made its peaks stand out more. Even so, Dark Passion Play introduces another side of Nightwish with confidence: still ambitious and distinctive, but with new possibilities for its melodies and voices.
