Review by Morpheus Kitami for Nightwish - Once (2004)

Back in the day I used to think quite highly of this album compared to it's predecessors and successors. I can't see why now. Gone is the power part of the equation that was so great about Oceanborn, yet it doesn't quite embrace the more fully symphonic sound that the Olzon-era would become. Instead, it's just sort of awkwardly sitting in '00s chug.
I daresay that if it was someone else who made this album, it would be a lot more controversial at best, outright hated at worst. (In the metal world, anyway) I Wish I Had an Angel, in particular, you could just slap into any dance club mix and it would fit perfectly; Right down to the sexy lyrics which are far more dark than they are on the surface. I can't rightly put my finger on why I like it compared to something like Evanesence.
Which isn't to say I dislike the album. I think the first four songs (including I Wish I Had an Angel, that's just an observation) are possibly the best Nightwish have ever done. Dark Chest of Wonders is a good opener, oddly structured. The chorus is incidental to sweeping instrumental sections, only appearing twice. The use of a choir singing sharp, short notes is odd, but I don't listen to enough opera to know if that's truly as odd as it appears to me. It really strikes a good balance between symphonic and metal, reminding me why Nightwish still kind of is the top of the roost when it comes to the sub-genre.
But then we get Creek Mary's Blood, which starts off Nightwish's trend of long, overwrought and pretentious self-indulgence. Stopping everything for an important message, though the Trail of Tears is less pretentious than 15 minutes of "it sucks being Toumas Holopainen". Nightwish's grand symphonic sound clashes with the depressing nature the lyrics invoke of people being torn from their ancestral land. It's not that it's a bad subject for a song, Satan and Running Wild did the same broad subject, I just don't think Nightwish can do effectively a funeral dirge about it.
I wouldn't say songs after this get bad or anything, but they definitely suffer coming after this song. Doubly so on extended versions of the album. By the time Ghost Love Score is over, I'm about done with the album, yet on the version I listened to, there were still five more songs. Even with just two more songs on the normal version of the album, that's a lot to go through.
Lyrically, it's a lot of cheesy, sentimental self-loathing from a Finnish man with a questionable grasp of English, and I love it. There is a subtleness, that perhaps I'm imagining, to the package, that you can't get solely by hearing the album or reading the lyrics. This comes out most strongly in Planet Hell, in which one line is supposed to be "you wanderer", but Tarja clearly sings "you murderer". Considering the content of the lyrics otherwise, I'd be surprised if that was accidental.
In the end, I still stand by my original thought that this sits awkwardly between better albums, even if it has really strong elements to it. I can see why someone else would think of this as their favorite.