Tarja
Colours In The Dark

It seems incredible, but finally an artist who many had accused of living almost exclusively off past glories and "good old days" (and given the only mediocre quality of albums like "My Winter Storm" and "What Lies Beneath," not entirely without reason) hits the target on her third attempt, releasing the best work of her solo career so far. This is because Tarja Turunen has realized, after the golden period with Nightwish, that she can record whatever she wants, and above all, that she doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone; and so, while Tuomas Holopainen, driven by his boundless ego and his love for pompous and self-serving orchestral virtuosity, as well as a chronic lack of ideas and inspiration, continues to transform what once was one of the best symphonic metal bands into a group, albeit composed of good musicians, for excited youngsters and pseudo-metal fans orphaned of Evanescence, the Finnish soprano seems to have finally found the best way to express herself, musically speaking.

Indeed, Turunen, with "Colours in The Dark," leaves behind the sound of her previous albums which, although tested, felt terribly stale, to embrace a sound perhaps less typically metal, but definitely more personal and rich in nuances: the colors of the title are varied and numerous, all expressed convincingly and perceptibly during the listening of the ten tracks that make up the album. Ten songs that smoothly range from dark-tinted episodes like the heavy rock of "Neverlight" and "500 Letters" to others with brighter and more energetic tones like the ballad "Until Silence" (the only ballad of the entire work, which is almost incredible, considering Tarja’s penchant for more melodic pieces) and the marching-beat single "Victim of Ritual," not to mention the dreamlike hues of gems like "Lucid Dreamer" and "Mystique Voyage," pieces that even today Holopainen would pay gold and blood to be able to record in a future album, and the very successful collaboration with Justin Furstenfeld in "Medusa." All of this is surrounded by small, but significant and appreciated, electronic experimentation, noticeable, for example, in the oriental nuances of "500 Letters" and, more generally, in the album production, which is much more refined and personal than in the past, and able to give the overall picture its precise identity and uniqueness.

An added value to the whole is Tarja’s voice, always powerful and this time incredibly improved not only in purely technical terms (we can safely say goodbye to the overly exaggerated vibrato of the previous record), but also in terms of interpretation, being less cold and much more at ease than in the past; the album, in short, is hers, and she doesn't miss a chance to make us feel how much she believes in this project. A project that, it must be said, remains far from perfect: apart from the usual commercial concessions probably imposed by the record label (the single "Never Enough," the only track I would have gladly omitted from the tracklist), in general, it is noticeable how the purely instrumental part of the songs, although well-cared for, has been left somewhat in the shadows compared to the vocal part, ending up being well-done but without particular flair that would elevate it from the role of simple accompaniment for Turunen’s vocals.

This doesn't significantly undermine the overall quality of "Colours in The Dark," which remains an honest and enjoyable album in its entirety and a nice lesson in style for the current Nightwish (furthermore, once again without a permanent frontwoman; is Holopainen regretting having thrown the original vocalist out of the band?).