Nightwish - Hvman. :||: Natvre. (2020)^{Release ID: 18631}

Nightwish have always been near the top, if not number one, on my list of essential symphonic metal bands. I still stand by Wishmaster as being their best album, and even after the departure of Tarja in the mid 2000s, Annette Olson was able to hold her own, and together they released Imaginaerum, which should go down as one of symphonic metals best records of the 2010s. Unfortunately, something so fine could not last forever. Enter Floor Jansen for 2015’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful, a decent record, but far from the heights this band has seen in the past.

Now it’s been over five years since then and now we have Human. :||: Nature. and man I feel let down by this. For as long and unbalanced as Endless Forms Most Beautiful was, you would think that after five years the band would have fixed those mistakes. But they didn’t; Floor Jansen’s vocal timbre is stronger during her belting portions, but her low end is painfully lacking in bass and grit that Tarja and Annette naturally had. The background vocals aren’t as dynamic as previous records, and speaking of which, Marko Hietala’s howls are practically non-existent. And the hooks just don’t split the difference between the heavy crunch and melodic dominance as the band has previously done, and what Epica is doing right now (please come back to us Epica, we need you!).

And as for the second half of this project, there isn’t a ton to say about “All the Works of Nature Which Adorn the World”. It’s pleasant for sure, and it reminds me in a sense of the direction Panopticon went on the second half of their record The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness, but as a long symphonic epic, I would have expected some closure or at the very least, some sort of connecting idea to bring this entire piece together. In short, this piece did not need to be collected together in the way that Nightwish intended.

But at the end of the day, the moments that do stand out are what makes Nightwish such a household name in symphonic metal: anthemic, melodic, gritty, truly “epic”. But Human. :||: Nature. does not have a lot of it. And because the album doesn't feel like an evolution of the last album, I can't help but feel really let down by this.