After a 5 year hiatus, Nightwish decided to come back with one of their most conceptually pleasing and realised albums yet. The album is a two sided masterclass at creating grand and heavy symphonic metal bangers with low-key and long-winded orchestral slow burners. The first disk starts with the epic „Music“, which is easily the best track of the first half of the album – the slow orchestral build up, the jungle-type send off and the classic power metal Nightwish finnish makes for a perfect opener and how was it not a single will forever remain a mistery to all of us. Then there is the actual first single „Noise“, which really is just a noise compared to the last track – if there is something clear with this track though, it’s that the chorus won’t leve your head for days, I can guarantee you that. The vocaly pleasing „Shoemaker“, and the acoustic slowdown „Harvest“, are also both nice touches, with „Harvest“ exploding into some nice power metal madness in the second half of the song. The actual slowdown of the first disk is the song „Endlesness“, which can admitedly get a little boring, but it serves its purpose as a closer and as a transition to the second disk. Though what’s definetly NOT boring, is the song „Tribal“, which always gets my blood pumping every time I listen to it. Then there is the song „Procession“, with its smooth and magical keys and its luscious yet heavy instrumentation – it’s a really strong and powerful moment on the album.
The album quickly changes pace after the first disk though – the second disk uses little to no elements of the classic symphonic metal Nightwish sound – instead it goes for this orchestral formula, which surprisingly works really well. The second half works as a cool down, after the epic ride that was the first disk – at least that’s how I interpret it. There is also basicallIy no singing on this half, which is a little disapointing, considering how much of an amazing vocalist Floor Jansen is. This half, more then anything, works as a whole expirience, and that’s why I have a hard time picking a favorite song, because they all blend into a one grand and exciting expirience. Truly and honestly my biggest complain is, that it can get real tiring real quick – if you don’t manage to get lost in the sound since the first song, you’re gonna have a hard time keeping attention to those spacy orchestral instrumentals sometimes. Though I’d like to give credit to the last song of the album „Ad Astra“, which is this beautiful 4 and a half minute beast of a song, that closes this album perfectly.
So, overall, is this album perfect? No, it definetly has its flaws, especially in the whole 80 minutes of its runtime, it can get a little tiring on a few songs here and there. Is it their best album yet? No, not even close – that position, in MY opinion, still bellongs to their previous album „Endless Forms The Most Beautiful“, but you can still hear a few improvments on this new project over here, since that album came out. Overall I’d say it is an appriciable effort from the band, with some really great highlights and for me, the 5 year long wait has really paid off.
strong 7/10