Beat magazine Victoria, Jan 2008

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Nightwish (By Jesse Shrock) - Beat magazine Victoria, Jan 2008, Issue 110

Tuomas Holpainen is a guy of big and bold tastes. He listens to film scores in his downtime. He names Walt Whitman as his literary hero. And, as founder an chief songwriter of Finnish supergroup Nightwish - descriptions of which might begin with 'gothic', 'symphonic' or 'epic', but will almost certainly end with 'metal' - Holopainen is the main responsible party for carving the band's latest offering, Dark Passion Play, into the annals of history as the most expensive Finnish album ever made.

But if Holopainen is proud (or even embarrassed) by this distinction, he doesn't show it. Rather, he seems to regard the album's estimated 500,000 Euro pricetag as simply going rate for artistic fulfilment. "It just cost what it cost" he says matter-of-factly. "It was just agreed in the band before we started to do this album that, at this point in our career, we had to make no compromises whatsoever; (it was) whatever we want, and as long as it takes. And it ended up taking ten months in the studio alone".

As with Nightwish's breakout success Once the majority of the time and budget of Dark Passion Play was poured into the arrangements for a specially-assembled orchestra and choir, this time recorded at the famous Abbey Road studios.
"We were actually there, in Abbey Road, when they recorded all the orchestral parts", Holopainen relates. "It's just indescribable...fantastic...the feeling that you have when 70 people are playing music that you have written, and playing it so passionately, with so much genuine interest. These people are the world's best musicians, but most of what they do is for classical concerts and film soundtracks, so this was definately something different for them as well. I mean, they were almost head banging while they were getting the takes! So it was very encouraging".

Dark Passion Play is nothing if not ambitious, the sweeping orchestrations working against the heavy crunch of the core band, providing the backing for Holopainen 's evocative lyrics.
When I happen to refer to the lyrical content as 'fantasy' however, I am politely but firmly corrected. "The way I see it is that, with these songs, I'm just writing the diary of my life" Holopainen says. "And every song has its own very personal meaning. There's a song like Bye Bye Beautiful, which is about former vocalist Tarja. And there's Eva, which deals with a young girl being baulked at school, which is something I went through as well. And there is 7 Days To The Wolves, which quotes heavily from Walt Whitman. I mean, it's all born from the emotions that I have in a certain period of life".

Unbridled compositional ambition and unabashed emotional catharsis; Dark Passion Play wastes no time in demonstrating both of these characteristics with its opening song The Poet and The Pendulum, a 14 minute epic about a tortured writer who turns out to be Tuomas himself. In fact, as the song comes to its climax, Tuomas is found "naked and dead, with a smile on his face, a pen, and 1000 pages of erased text".

The approapriate question would seem to be "Dude, what happened to you?!"

Holopainen laughs. "I thought about that a lot", he says, "because I don't want to be egoistic, or selfish, but when you have a period in your life when everything and everybody sucks, big time, and you feel as bad as can feel, like I did at the end of 2005..." Tuomas pauses.
"I never, ever felt like killing myself in real life. Absolutely not. I love life. But I just had this strong urge to kill myself in an imaginary way. And as a songwriter, I have a chance to do that, even share it with the world. It's just an idea that I had, that I had to kill myself, and kill myself in a very concrete way, so that's why I even put my own name (in the lyrics)".

"Now when I listen to the song, I find it hard to relate to the message anymore, because its been two years. I'm a happy person, things are really good. So I feel a little bit weird, for example, when I perform the song live".

It seems Holopainen is in the habit of making his own feelings, and that of the band, a matter of public record. The most infamous example of this occurred when Nightwish dumped their previous vocalist, Tarja Turunen, through an open letter posted on their website. This, of course, made it necessary to find a replacement, which they did through a general invitation for try-outs. After sifting through the vocal demos of an estimated 2000 hopefuls, the group auditioned only a selected few before settling on new recruit Anette Olzon.

"When we started to look for a new vocalist, the only thing that we knew for sure is that we didn't want to have another classically-trained, operatic singer," Holopainen explains. "We didn't want to have a copycat of the previous singer, but somebody who could have totally their own style, with the same amount of passion, power and emotion in her voice. And that's exactly what we found in Anette. With her voice, I think she has brought, let's say, an easier approach to the vocals. I mean, it's not the most distinctive sound in the world, but somehow it's more warm and down-to-earth. More like a storyteller than a singer...

"Also her persona is really open. She laughs a lot, she cries a lot, she's very open about everything. So in that way, she brings balance to the band, because the guys in the band are usually are a bit on the quiet side."

Although Nightwish naturally can't afford to bring the full orchestral element with them on tour, (Australian fans can expect the core band, along with a mixture of baking tracks and synthesizers) Tuomas says that at least one performance of their material in its full glory is certainly on the cards.

"At some point we will", he assures. "We have been in discussions about it for years now, and it's something we have to do at some stage during this upcoming tour. To bring the whole orchestra, the whole choir, and just do everything live. It's going to take a large venue, a lot of organising and a lot of money, but it will definately happen, I think".

Nightwish play the Palais tonight Wednesday January 30. Dark Passion Play is now out through Roadrunner.