Metal Reviews

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Yeah, it's not Floor's fault, but this band is too Grandiose for it's own good. It's a shame that they can't just write some good progressive symphonic metal without all the storybook bullshit. She is an incredible vocalist and nabbed herself a great job with a successful act, but as far as an everyday listen; I think Nightwish has just written themselves out of that kind of listen with their over the top theater vibe. It's great for what it is, but sometimes I just want good songs without the nagging narration BS. Blind Guardian did a great job of writing a concept album, but skipping the whole narration stuff on their newest album "Beyond the Red Mirror." That's half the reason I can't just press play on Nightfall because they had so much narration filler stuff. At least BG separated the tracks so you could skip through that stuff. Anyway, I love Floor's voice so I will check it out, but after reading this review, I have a feeling that it will be to much story crap ruining the songs and making them sound contrived and bloated.

In fairness to the band, only the first and last songs really have narration. That's thirty minutes out of an album that's an hour and twenty minutes long - it's very bloated, but even stripped of the truly ridiculous stuff you have a decent listen. Definitely worth hearing.

If there's one leading lady who can make Nightwish a great band again, it's Floor Jansen. I don't normally have a thing for operatic female vocals, but she's truly one of the great symphonic metal singers of all time.

And if there's one band that can miss a chance to use all that talent properly, it's Nightwish...

On spot review. The greatest show on earth is the weakest song. The booring interludes. The chorus has been heard a thousand times before and my guess its taken from "Avatar". The first 5 tracks rocked well for me after that it gets blurry.

I agree with Goat's score on this. I think overall it's a solid album....the problem is that it's super standard/safe for a Nightwish album. So many of the riffs and song structures are very similar to songs from previous albums. Some people online have suggested that Tuomas may have been tapped out creatively due to his time spent on the Scrooge album. But who knows, it's just speculation.

With regards to The Greatest Show On Earth, I actually don't find it to be as ambitious or over-the-top as a lot of people seem to think it is. If anything it's one of the songs on the album that supports my point about them playing it super safe on this album. The only thing they did different this time around (compared to their past 10+ minute epic songs) was....add in some monkey and whale sounds. The section at the beginning of the song where there's a drum bang accompanied by strings (at around 1:30) is very similar to the beginning of Song Of Myself. And the ending of the "We were here!" part that goes into a loud crash followed by a soft piano? The Poet And The Pendulum has pretty much the same thing. Richard Dawkins' narration? They've had narration on past songs, particularly with the aforementioned Song Of Myself which has that five minute spoken word bit to end the song.

Again I do think it's a solid album, and I think most NW fans will enjoy it, but for the most part they didn't really attempt anything new on this.

I Agree, there is not much new in terms of sound, but the guitar work and songwriting has progressed since their previous album.
This is a huge improvement over Imaginareum which was such a disjointed cohesive mess of an album. This is a step in the right direction
and let's just hope they let Floor Jansen take more risks vocally and let her talent shine, because after seeing her on tour recently I was highly impressed by her vocals skills.
She could sing the dictionary or alphabet to me and make it interesting and pleasing! She totally nailed songs from
Oceanborn to more recent material. She's so versatile she could sing basically anything.

Floor is an impressive vocalist but that alone isn't enough to overcome my dislike for Nightwish. Their music is boring. If epic is all you do that's fine but execute it in an interesting way. Nightwish are so over-the-top it detracts from the quality. It's a bit like Nile or Portal after the second album you know exactly what to expect and the formula never changes.