Marko Hietala

By Carl Begai

Nightwish keyboardist / founder Tuomas Holopainen would have you believe that Human. :II: Nature. is the band’s biggest and best album to date. In terms of scope the new record is most certainly the biggest, as it’s divided into two parts: nine songs on what amounts to an old schooler’s Disc 1, and a classical piece, “All the Works of Nature Which Adorn the World” divided into eight parts, composed and constructed by Holopainen with longtime collaborator Pip Williams on Disc 2, envisioned and assembled as something meant to be listened to as a complete experience. As for the “best”, that comes down to a matter of personal taste, but it’s easy to understand why Holopainen believes it. Human. :II: Nature. is the band’s most diverse offering ever – sometimes shockingly so – taking them into musical territories they have perhaps only touched on in the past and, in so doing, creating a much more exciting Nightwish sound. This flies in the face of first single, “Noise”, which was as trademark symphonic metal Nightwish (read: predictable) as you can get. Second single “Harvest”, on the other hand, turned the tables completely by putting uilleann pipes player / backing vocalist Troy Donockley up front and keeping singer Floor Jansen in the background for a song that is 100% folk-oriented. And this is only the beginning, as fans will discover as they navigate Human. :II: Nature.’s bold environment.

BraveWords: Choosing “Noise” as the first single… given how diverse the album is, was that done to ease fans into the record by giving them what they want?

Tuomas: “We chose ‘Noise’ as the first single for the subject matter – addiction to technology – because we knew it would make a brilliant video. I usually don’t like to put out singles because I don’t want to take out one song and put it on a pedestal, and make it somehow special, but these days that’s just how the story goes. The only reason that Human. :II: Nature. ended up being a double album is that it doesn’t fit on one CD. There was never actually a plan to do a double album. And then, when the idea of separating the two sections came up, it made sense.”

BraveWords: I find that “Noise” makes a much bigger impact on a real sound system as opposed to watching the YouTube video, which is actually where the vast majority of people experienced the track for the first time. I was much more invested in the song after hearing it large and loud.

Tuomas: “Definitely. I’ve got this constant anticipated disappointment that people are going to listen to this album on YouTube or on their phones. It’s tragic that people don’t listen to music the way they used to. People don’t listen to albums anymore, and you really want to listen to this album from beginning to end, right from the diaphanous beginning to the end of the second disc. People should take that journey more often because it might help them in everyday life.”

By Carl Begai

Nightwish bassist / vocalist Marko Hietala was in the business of making music long before keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen launched the band in 1996. Back in 1984 – almost 20 years before he would join Nightwish, in 2001 – Hietala and his brother Zachary founded Tarot, a metal band that would find underground popularity in their native Finland but remain relatively obscure internationally until the Crows Fly Black album in 2007. Nightwish’s rise to mega-fame is in the history books, with Hietala as one of the players that made their 2004 album, Once, an international breakthrough. And now, after three Nightwish studio albums under his belt with a fourth on the horizon, he has released Pyre Of The Black Heart, a low-key solo record. It originally surfaced as a Finnish version – Mustan Sydämen Rovio – issued in the spring of 2019; news of an English version hit later in the year with an early 2020 release planned as Hietala, record label Nuclear Blast, and the rest of the world gear up for the new Nightwish record, Human. :II: Nature., due in April of this year.

“I’ve been working on this album for the last couple of years, but we didn’t get into any hype for it until we were ready to put it out,” Hietala explains. “That made it easier because we didn’t have to deal with any extra pressure. There is always some pressure that you put on yourself when you’re releasing something new, of course, but we didn’t have any of that from the outside, which was good. It’s been a long time dream as a musician to do something like this, and now was the time. Nightwish was taking a sabbatical and I had enough material. Some of the pieces go back as much as 15 years, but most of the songs became concrete over the last four years or so. Then, two-and-a-half years ago we started putting this together. There were a few things that got in the way as we were making this, but it all came together.”

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