Nightwish
Once

THE REVIEW

I peel them with meticulous care and once finished, with a pleased demeanor, I lay them on the deep plate. It takes just a couple of minutes, those needed to cut precise thick slices shaped like ancient spear tips, and exposed to the air, they oxidize. First, I sink my teeth into the tender flesh and let the sweet and fragrant flavor fill the walls of my palate. Then, calmly, I decisively attack the cheese. It excites my tongue, almost tingles it. The flavors at this point dance, embrace, and mutually enhance each other by merging in their contrast. A couple of bites and they return vehemently to the scene until the plate is once again bare.

I don't think it is a titanic and arduous task to choose the correct pairing of pears and smelly cheese between Tarja Turunen and the bearded closet Marko Hietala. The Finnish Nightwish, it should be said right away, have invented less than nothing with their music, which is evidently based on contrasts. Honestly, I do not have a particular memory of the album I want to talk to you about today, and whether the tracklist of “Once” is qualitatively superior to that of “Century’s Child,” “Wishmaster,” or “Oceanborn” etc... I care as much as knowing the result of Bucks Vs Nets last night. Little. Instead, I am intrigued to talk to you about these 50 minutes spread over 11 tracks for another reason. In the musical field, the adjective commercial is often used in extremely disparaging terms, almost sly and mean, as if it were a nice ax stabbed between the shoulder blades of poor fans. Often it is so. Not always.

“Once” from 2004 is a Gala evening, the opening ceremony of the Olympics in which nothing, absolutely nothing, is left to chance so that everything can work like a Swiss watch condemned to death by its precise and perpetual ticking. By moving to the gigantic Universal production house, they invest as never before with the utopian goal of getting the band out of the elite and relatively niche dimensions. They succeeded, and I do not think it was luck, nor the result of general stupefaction, but a predictable result for a product packaged to perfection.

The band leader, keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen, armed himself with a broom of brooms to sweep and temporarily put under the carpet the folkloric atmospheres of early career, leaving sporadic traces in the ethnic, and partly acoustic: “Creek Mary’s Blood” and “Koulema Tekee Taitelijian”. Songs that take us for two long hikes between redskins and native icy lands. Not satisfied, he shows off the heavy silverware with gothic tones well underlined by riffs never so stern and almost at the limit with thrash. Heavy-handed punches, sandpaper on a pan, capable of scratching and injuring the ears: far removed from the typical “high” sound of the guitars on previous albums. Clear examples of such sonic verve are “Dark Chest Of Wonder” and “Planet Hell”. Masterfully written flash in the pan, capable of igniting spectacularly and then fading in an instant with the swift arrival of airy choirs. A well-prepared tablecloth with a real symphonic orchestra ready to underline and highlight imposing intros/outros on which the beautiful warbling of Taurine Tarja stands out (“The Ghost Love Score”). 10 pompous, magnificent, cinematic minutes for a musical epic with a crescendo that, however predictable and expected, cannot leave one indifferent.
You gnaw confidently at your sandwich, but something unexpected gets caught between the molars. The techno!! This, I must admit, is the icing on the cake of the album. Never would I have expected it from Nightwish, yet in “Wish I Had An Angel”, the arrangement is just that and, more surprising, it even becomes addictive. I am writing and keep replaying it: as if it were a muse whispering to me.

“Once” is excellently constructed starting from the rare cleanliness of sound production. The CD, like a grenade, aims to strike with a multitude of fragments, and the heterogeneous nature of the album (with gallops, ballads, heavy metal, symphonic, and gothic tracks) is its true strength. The style of the old Nightwish can be glimpsed under a thick fog and is exaggerated. In the guitar sound, in the duets between Tarja and Marko, in the imposing orchestrations. The space for the symphonic side is halved in favor of dark and gothic atmospheres, thus riding in advance the musical trend now in the take-off phase at the time of the CD's release (2004). It's a great little disc to listen to with pleasure even years later, and its enormous success will let the band safely graze until their retirement, which can be lived in mere and sad copy-paste.

ilfreddo