Take the music of John Tesh or Yanni, add some eye makeup, black
leather, distorted guitars and a female vocalist, and the result is
Finnish rockers Nightwish. On their latest release Once,
Nightwish attempt to combine the sweeping orchestration of
classical music with the crunching, fierce sound of heavy metal.
The problem is that Nightwish simply layers these two genres on top
of each other, failing to combine them in new and innovative ways
that would vault the individual styles to another plateau.
Consequentially, the songs grow cheesy and mundane, displaying
nothing more than basic musical competence on the part of the band.
The songs might be good background music for an animated sci-fi
movie, but fail to hold listeners for a 70-minute, standalone
album.

Predictability should be the enemy of a musical group, not its
bedfellow. There’s a big difference between being a band that
consistently operates within a particular style of music, and being
a band that does the same damn thing in every song. Lead singer
Tarja Turunen’s voice is unquestioningly beautiful and solid,
sounding more appropriate for operatic work than this
metal-symphony amalgamation, but her inflection is always the same
and every song is guaranteed to be doubled up multiple times.
Things only seem to get worse when bassist Marco Hietala provides
backup vocals in songs like “Wish I Had an Angel” and
“Planet Hell.” His voice makes one wonder if former
Styx frontman Dennis DeYoung was invited to the studio to drop a
few lyrics in homage to “Mr. Roboto.”

When a band has a keyboardist, a whole new world of sounds that
opens up. Unfortunately, pianist Tuomas Holopainen does not bother
to explore this range, settling instead for unaltered,
preprogrammed samples or bland piano lines. Much like the
keyboards, guitarist Emppu Vuorinen strums phrases that are nothing
more than overly exploited power chords with the occasional run up
the fret board and high-pitched whammy-bar dive. The guitar solo in
“Ghost Love Score” only serves to reinforce the
mediocrity of Vuorinen’s playing.

The more than 50 members of the orchestra neglect to add
anything more than rudimentary chords and tawdry accents. The
light, delicate timbre of the orchestra takes too much away from
the biting crunch of the guitar, watering down any potential
interest the riffs may have. Potential is the keyword with
Nightwish. They have it, but need to expand their chops and abandon
the basics-of-metal safety net.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars