DARK PASSION PLAY

Nightwish

Progressive Metal

3.81 | 217 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

An extremely exciting and enjoyable album from this Finnish band that successfully amalgamates a variety of styles, from heavy symphonic goth rock to folk-rock.

Some of the music on "A Dark Passion Play" is totally wonderful, some just very good indeed! The album begins with the majestic, totally brilliant "The Poet and the Pendulum", a 14-minute long opus that makes a huge impact with its symphonic heavy rock style. There's a number of different sections over the duration of the song, all very effective. It is inventive, melodic and very powerful. Anette Olzon's singing is heavenly and, on this song as well as a couple of others, strikingly offset against Marco Hietala's vocal. What a start to an album. Wow! Wow! Wow!

After such an exciting start it would be understandable if the quality reduced somewhat but no, the next song, "Bye Bye Beautiful", is equally good, although (like the remaining eleven songs on the album of a more conventional length for a rock album). The album continues at a high standard throughout, not always reaching the peaks of the first two tracks (which is understandable), without ever letting up on the highs. "Eva", about half way through, is another high point - slower pace, gorgeous lead guitar solo and a beautifully sung melody.

The last four songs develop in style to embrace aspects of folk-rock to great effect - In fact, the most overtly folk-rock of the four, "Last of the Wilds" is a wonderful shindig! It's fast, it's furious - it is a wonderful heady mix of fiddles, rock guitar, penny whistles and the like.

Incredibly the album finishes on a high, "Meadows of Heaven" being as good as the other highlights mentioned here. Magically embracing all of the musical elements already visited, it oozes class. Its melody is just so beautiful and so delightfully sung that you will want to be playing it over and over again.

alextorres2 | 5/5 | 2008-2-25

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