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