NIGHTWISH: Oceanborn (MELODIC METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Nightwish's first album allowed those of us who know how to listen between notes to identify real potential. Two years later, what remains of the album of the consecration for this Finnish band is released.

From the beginning of the first track, the slap is huge: the production is a thousand times better, finally highlighting the orchestrations as they deserve, the small defects that could be found before are erased and above all, the voice is now amazing. Tarja Turunen was an excellent singer in 1997, she became an exceptional singer in 1999.

With Oceanborn, the very principles of Nightwish are finally clearly laid down: a purely metal rhythmic and an incisive guitar on the one hand, a singer and classical keyboards on the other, all adorned with omnipresent choirs and regular interventions by a flutist to soften everything up a little. The recipe is moderately original for the time but it is effective anyway.

In terms of compositions, the band's thinking head, Tuomas Holopainen, keyboard, displays a wealth of imagination, has an obvious sense of harmony and knows how to move us with his walks as well as excite us with his hit songs. Listen to the break of 'Devil And The Deep Dark Ocean' and you won't believe it: bring together in the same song a frenetic double pedal, a male voice from beyond the grave, a singer and a classical orchestra avatar on keyboards without falling into caricature, you had to manage to do it!

Another point on which Nightwish has worked in extremely positive ways: male voices. On this album, they are finally coherent with the whole and bring a real plus.

Finally, it is impossible to close this chapter without mentioning two pieces that contribute to show the extent of the talent of this group. The first is 'Moondance', the only instrumental track of the record, deliciously jubilant for its medieval folk dance side, to which modern rhythmic and amplification bring a completely offbeat character that makes you want to smile.

The second is 'Walking In The Air', an adaptation of a Howard Blake song that Ritchie Blackmore also covered in the 1980s with the late Rainbow. Let's not go in four directions, with all the admiration I have for Blackmore, but it goes without saying that the Nightwish version returns Rainbow's to the rank of a nursery rhyme. It's beautiful, moving, energetic, nothing is missing...

It is difficult, after that, to exceed or even equal this level. It seems that with Oceanborn, Nightwish gave it all. The rest will prove that this is not the case and that the five Finns still have a lot to say. - Official website

NIGHTWISH

OCEANBORN

SPINEFARM RECORDS

MELODIC METAL