EDITOR´S NOTE: Hello Rocker!
Me and the Hard Blast team want to apologise for these weeks without any updates but I´ve been quite busy covering the summer festivals to give you great photos, reviews and news.
We´ve been also working on new partnerships to upgrade the website and improve our work.
In a couple of weeks everything will be back to normal and you can wait for great stuff!
Besides Tuska Open Air and Hellfest, we were at Ruisrock, Sonisphere, will be at Ankkarock and have done great interviews which are coming soon.
All this traveling will be over soon ´cause summer is unfortunatelly close to the end so, don´t give up on us! We´ll be back even better!!!
Stay rock!
Maila
It was in Rio de Janeiro, on the 19th of November that the Finnish band Nightwish ended the Brazilian tour with a lot of charisma, competence, professionalism and above all, kindness, a lot of kindness.
The world tour from the album DARK PASSION PLAY began last year, in October and it brings a different NIGHTWISH to the audience. The sound is more direct, more integrated to the fans, and it shows more love to music.
The band members´attitude on stage today shows a group of musicians who love what they do and I have to say that I´ve never had this impression about them before (important to mention that this is my personal opinion), when they looked distant, impersonal, introspective and had only Marco Hietala´s charisma (bassist since 2001), to communicate with the audience.
The band exists since 1996 and became famous for its Symphonic Metal very well directed by the talented keyboard player Tuomas Holopainen, main composer of the group, and by the opera vocals of the former singer, now on solo career, Tarja Turunen, who was fired in 2005
On this tour, NIGHTWISH faces a very difficult task in my opinion: introducing a new work with a new singer. It isn´t easy to anybody to substitute a member who is part of a band´s history, specially if this person was there for 10 years. The chosen one, the Swedish singer Annette Olzon, accepted this challenge and has been showing that she can captivate the audience with her kindness, her beautiful smile, hew own style and, above all this, her beautiful voice, that shows a complete different attitude if compared to the former singer.
Another important point is the fact that Tuomas has always been the real band leader and after Marco joined the band, they both became the main partnership that seems to be the owner of the band´s directions. Tarja never played a band leader role in NIGHTWISH and it makes this change easier.
The band got on stage playing Bye Bye Beautiful with strength and energy to the max point having Marco and Annette sharing the vocals. Giving more space to Marco in relation to singing is something I consider extremely intelligent since he´s got great voice and presence. The “motorcycle viking” looks, charisma, nice talking to the audience and amazing interaction are there 100% of the show. Annette wasn´t different and those who don´t know the band would never say that she hasn´t been a part of that from the very beginning. She jumps, uses the stage without leaving gaps, talks to the audience, interacts to the other members all the time and is never afraid of having her her messed, the makeup blurred, her clothes dirty and sings with great attitude.
The second song of the concert was Whoever Brings the Night, followed by The Siren and Dead to the World and during all moments there was some kind of communication that didn´t allow anybody to stop jumping.
Circo Voador was crowded and everybody sang all songs, applauded and screamed all the time.
Screaming the singer´s name in choir was a very nice attitude from Rio fans as they were told she had problems with some fans in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, who started screaming Tarja´s name during the concert. It was possible to see how touched she got when they started screaming “ANNETE, ANNETE, ANNETE...” At that moment I was very proud of Rio de Janeiro.
Tuomas didn´t stop smiling and neither banging, as usual. He´s attitude on stage, despite being introspective since he hardly ever speaks, is something so particular that words become unnecessary. He is shy but not unkind, actually I´d say it´s the opposite. I´d say Tuomas communicates through his eyes and his music. He is able to do it in a way just a few people can.
Guitarist Emppu Vuorinen also looked very different if compared to years ago. He ran, kept his position, went to the front of the stage during his solos, didn´t stop for a minute and smiled all the time. Drummer Julius Nevalainen also showed presence, power and excellent drumming.
While listening to classic songs such as Wishmaster and I Wish I Had an Angel it is clear that the choice for Annette wasn´t only because of her competence but also the necessity of taking chances on something new, a new posture, a new concept.
She sings the songs on her way not doing anything that could possibly remind us of Tarja. Her singing style is more pop but there is a lot of rock attitude there. There is no tension and neither lyricism. It is practically impossible to compare them. Actually I wouldn´t even compare the band.
The fact is: it was clear how happy they are demonstrating all the time satisfaction, integration, something I had never seen in NIGHTWISH before. I´ve always thought they were a good band but except by Marco, I used to consider them cold and distant from each other. There was something heavy in the band´s atmosphere that used to make me tired but now this feeling is completely over. If there was something missing to make me a real NIGHTWISH´s fan now there isn´t anything. They´re great.
BRAZILIAN SET LIST (there might have been little changes):
1 - Intro + Bye Bye Beautiful
2 - Whoever brings the night
3 - The Siren
4 - Dead to the world
5 - Amaranth
6 - Ever Dream
7 - The Islander
8 - The Poet and the Pendulum
9 - Come cover me
10- Symphony Of Destruction
11- Sahara
12- Dark chest of wonders
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13 - Wishmaster
14 - I wish I had an angel
