Review by Morpheus Kitami for Nightwish - Yesterwynde (2024)

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.