Nightwish - Yesterwynde (2024)^{Release ID: 54796}

When you think of Nightwish, what's the first thing that comes to mind?

This is a genuine question for those who are reading this and are familiar with the Finnish, Symphonic metal giants. This is a band that, through the 2000s, produced a number of high quality symphonic metal records that were packed to the brim with excellent production, fun and catchy hooks, and well thought out, well constructed album concepts. However, in recent years it appears like most of the lead decision making has been placed in the lap of Tuomas Holopainen since the departure of Tarja in 2006, not to mention the other band members all being replaced, with only Emppu as the other original member left. 

When Floor Jensen took over the lead vocal role in 2015 on Endless Forms Most Beautiful, the decline in quality was noticeable, but not unbearable. But with Yesterwynde, we can see that Tuomas has finally reached writers block. With most of the original pieces absent, all that's left is what Tuomas thinks Nightwish sounded like on Wishmaster. But without other voices to bounce off of, the rest of the band feels like they are just along for the ride. As such, Yesterwynde sounds like the soundtrack to a Marvel movie, without the Marvel movie. Any motivic development that was present on previous albums has been neutered in favour of some of the worst progressive metal tendencies that I can recall; unconnected style flips, unnecessary tempo changes, bloated runtimes that include features that add nothing and instrumental wankage for its own sake. The core of Nightwish ceases to exist.

If the songs sounded decent I could have made some excuses, but even the production has gotten more lousy. And I get it, symphonic metal is hard to produce properly; my biggest criticism of Lorna Shore's Pain Remains was how it felt like the band was playing every single instrument at the same time all of the time. Without a clear feature everything blends together. And that is especially so on Yesterwynde. Unlike Lorna Shore, Floor Jansen's vocals are clean and operatic, and that makes the mesh of sound even worse. Symphonic instrumentation is overwhelming when paired with the power metal instrumentals of guitar, percussion and keyboards. And the vocals are compressed so far into the back of the mix, whatever kind of thematic arc Nightwish might have presented on this album is muted.

The album does take a bit of a symphonic turn around "Spider Silk" and the albums production becomes a little bit more bearable, but by that point the damage has already been done, and the heavier soundscapes is what I come to hear from Nightwish in the first place. It's too bad to say, but even for legacy act territory, Yesterwynde is not a good album. It almost has the exact same issue that I had with Within Temptation's 2019 album, Resist. I like symphonic metal, I really do, but too many modern bands try to make an album sound epic by stacking layer upon layer without actually stopping to ask if its still sounds good or has just become an audible mess. 

Best Songs: Perfume Of The Timeless, Spider Silk

It's always felt disappointing that the Floor Jensen Nightwish albums have never really caught my interest. Her being in the band always felt like something that should be good...yet wasn't. The direction the Olzon years were going in was pretty good, and somehow when Jensen joined, despite something that should have made them better, they just lost most of what they had. This one was at least interesting enough to warrant continued interest.
While I wouldn't say this album is very good, it is good enough that it actually feels like the master instead of the hordes of imitators. The primary problem is that songs are too bloated lengthwise for their own good. Now, this isn't as bad as say, Iron Maiden, but most songs hover around seven minutes. I'm not going to say you can't do that, Trivumvirat released an amazing album that was just two or so 20 minute tracks. But...if prog bands who have been going on about as long as you have can manage a shorter average song length than you, you should probably consider if you need to cut some songs down.
Take one of the better tracks, Spider Silk. It's basically three and a half minutes long. There's a minute long acoustic folk section at the start that gradually goes into the song itself, and another one after the song ends. Now I've heard and liked one of Troy Donockley's solo albums, so it isn't that I don't care for the stuff, it's that the stuff going into this album is completely pointless. I can see where they're trying to go, some kind of atmospheric symphonic metal, but the thing is, the atmosphere doesn't go with what the real music and it doesn't contrast enough for there to be a difference. It's just there, distracting and wasting everyone's time from the real and clear star of the show.
The symphonic element of the album is still the focus, so much so that it's becoming clear that the metal aspect of the band is just a formality Toumas pays homage to with each album because nobody would just buy a symphony from Nightwish. The thing is, the album is at it's best when these tendencies are ignored and it goes for the plain old Nightwish+real orchestra that worked during the Olzon-era. It's these songs which are all I ever wanted from Floor in Nightwish.
So, despite its flaws, it gives me hope for the future of the band.