Dark Passion Play

If you don’t know who Nightwish are yet, it’s time to wake up…fast…because the Finnish goth-orchestral-metal band is already a phenomenon throughout the rest of the world. Nightwish’s fifth album, Once, hit #1 on the Pan-European charts, and extended their faithful fan-base in Australia where it sold over 10 000 copies.

On first listen, Nightwish seems to fall into the same genre as Evanescence and Lacuna Coil – female-fronted metal band with symphonic and gothic overtones. But any similarities end there. Seven albums in with ‘Dark Passion Play’ Nightwish are without doubt the template to which others have followed, again recording with a full orchestral compliment, this time at the Abbey Road studios in London.

The first single, ‘Amaranth’, has been certified gold in the band's native Finland only two days after its release.