Album Review: Nightwish - 'Yesterwynde'
Nightwish’s tenth album ‘Yesterwynde’ is a vast and bold work expressing the contradictions in the heart of the Finnish band, and hailing humanity in all its glorious wonder.
It ends a trilogy including predecessors ‘Endless Forms Most Beautiful’ and ‘Human. :II: Nature’, and the new work is the first record by the iconic symphonic metallers since the latter in April 2020.
Many records begin with a quick intro, but at 2 minutes 43 seconds, the opener – and title track - is the album’s shortest song in duration. It is a calm welcome to the breadth of Nightwish’s ambition. Tom Donockley, who plays a variety of instruments, made up the word ‘Yesterwynde’, which is the feeling that everyone is connected to past generations, who lived with their own ups and downs. Now they only exist as atoms in the universe. You start to think of those who have come and gone, and those still to come.
Because things change. That’s life. This is the first studio album to feature bassist Jukka Koskinen, who joined in 2021, but it retains their core sound whilst moving in a slightly heavier direction.
This comes to the fore in second track ‘An Ocean Of Strange Islands’, a nine-minute-plus composition which kicks up a gear with massive guitars and that Nightwish energy. ‘The Antikythera Mechanism’ is similarly anthemic, an epic driving track about an early prototype computer used by astronomers in ancient Greece.
Keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen retains his central influence, while Floor Jensen works wonders with her beautiful storytelling vocals. She helps the songs fly, a crucial element in the big genre of symphonic rock, so reliant on intricate narratives. What’s more, she nailed her recording sessions in just six days, a month after the birth of her second daughter.
Nightwish – aided by the guitars of Emppu Vuorinen and Kai Hahto on drums – still love their orchestral intensity, returning to Abbey Road Studios 16 years after their last visit. They navigate the rocks of human life with catchy melodies, serene chords, and a choir of children, noticeably present on ‘The Day Of…’, a Kate Bush-esque message of hope amid daily misery, with the young voices adding to the innocence of this.
Eight-minute first single ‘Perfume of the Timeless’ hinges on the concept, explained in the lyrics, “we are because of a million loves”. Each of us is part of a chain that stretches for billions of years, and it is serendipity we’re here at all. The whole concept is something to experience, which will get under your skin with multiple listens, as the many dimensions burst alive.
‘Sway’ is a softer counterweight, before the grandiose 80s-esque power of ‘The Children of ‘Ata’. Another atypical concept, this time the true story of Tongan children washed up on an island after being lost at sea, it is still told in Nightwish’s time-honoured style.
For the diehard fans, there are hidden easter eggs, implanted amidst years of painstaking work to piece ‘Yesterwynde’ together. Classic prog rock track ‘Something Whispered Follow Me’ has hints of ‘Nemo’, 20 years after it starred on ‘Once’, their first album with the label Nuclear Blast.
‘Spider Silk’ speaks with its own vengeance, intricately woven over six and a half minutes to quicken the heart. There are standard prog-rock escalations, before driving into emphatic pop-metal. The refrain “spin away, spin away” feels like a viral moment waiting to happen, or something you hope can be cathartically sung amidst an arena crowd in the future.
It won’t be any time soon – Nightwish won’t tour this album, citing personal reasons. Kai claims the band will take a hiatus of “two or three years” instead. Undoubtedly the freedom not to worry about making the tracks work in the world’s arenas has been a different experience from top to bottom.
‘Hiraeth’ starts out as a lullaby before morphing into something else entirely before its conclusion, before the intricate metal of ‘The Weave’, and the soft, temporary, farewell of ‘Lanternlight’, which rounds off the record.
There’s a lot to digest in ‘Yesterwynde’, but it’s worth using the cutlery to get inside. It is an hour and ten minutes, the trip with one of the world’s most heralded bands, but you see the wonder they see in the world.
It’s a fascinating document of three-and-a-half years of work by the band’s reckoning, longer than any other Nightwish album to craft. All aspects were catered from, from the lyrics (Tuomas calls it “the band’s most lyrically driven album”), to the puzzling compositions, to a 16-part YouTube documentary showing how the album came together (and a little insight into Pesäpallo, Finland’s national sport.)
‘Yesterwynde’ has the true heart of Nightwish, intricately formulated, beautifully delivered, and constantly shifting. There is an element of the mysticism that has made the Finnish band appeal to many, and held their status as legends. It’s the things we hide from, and those we dive deep into, which make life worth living. This lyric-driven entity will take time to savour, which is only fair after the long journey to completion.
The path of life weaves on. This record is not a farewell, there is ‘plenty of motivation’ for Nightwish to keep recording, by all accounts. It might be worth the wait. Until then, there’s plenty to explore in ‘Yesterwynde’.
Words by Samuel Draper
