Since their commercial breakthrough over ten years ago, Nightwish have become one of the biggest names of symphonic metal genre. The band has sold millions of albums and at the moment the band is on tour supporting Imaginaerum, their most ambitious release to date. Imaginaerum is band’s seventh album and the second to featuring Anette Olzon on vocals. Olzon replaced the band’s original singer Tarja Turunen in 2007 and recorded the band’s most successful album to date, Dark Passion Play. Their latest album Imaginaerum is a concept album which is accompanied by the movie directed by Stobe Harju. The movie will be released later this year.

The band was set to play Copenhagen’s Falkoner Salen, the place their Dutch fellow symphonic metallers Within Temptation played few months earlier. Even more people showed up to see the Nightwish and while the arena was not sold out, it was fairly packed.

After the intro in form of “Taikatalvi” the band, which was hidden behind the curtain that was covering the entire stage, opened with “Storytime” the first single form the new album. It was followed by a perfect song-number-two, “Wish I Had an Angel” from Once, their last album to feature Tarja Turunen on the vocals.
One glance at the stage and it was easy to see that lots of thought and time went into designing it. It’s as if it was circus meeting opera with metal twist. The many elements also made the stage setup seem incoherent and frenzied. The big screen in the background and pyrotechnics, however, did do their job and added more majestic feel to the show.

On the stage the band was very professional and the whole show was well planned, even thou the crew did have some issues with keyboards and pyrotechnics.
Acoustics in Falkoner Salen are in general not the best, but they are not bad either. This evening however, the sound of the band was far from perfect. There were number of oscillations and hazy passages, which partly did spoil the experience.
Looking at the band on stage, the professionalism and planned-out procedures were imposing, but the band also seemed for the most part very reserved and their performance cried of routine. Band’s leader Tuomas Holopainen was very anonymous despite being in the front of the stage and despite being surrounded by pile of iron pipes, so many that his keyboards and lover body were not visible. In the way it suited him well to be more in the background, so to say, because often most of the focus is otherwise always on him. Guitarist Emppu Vuorinen performance was monotonous and the drummer Jukka Nevalainen was entertaining and hard-hitting even when he “brushed” his drum kit during “Slow, Love, Slow”. Marco Hietala was in the front with Olzon and his performance was good, simple and likeable. Olzon singing might not have the same operatic tone as Turunen, but she is a good singer. As a performer there is not much rock ‘n’ roll about her and she is monotonous. English composer and multi-instrumentalist Troy Donockley guested on some six-seven songs and with his uilleann pipes added Celtic feel to the music. Sometimes there would be too much focus on him, but he did add some freshness to the show.

The emphasis of the setlist was expectedly on the new album, but it was somewhat surprising that they played almost the entire album. Fortunately the new album is very good and its diversity also added the dynamic to the show. Band also did theirs to make the setlist interesting by implementing an acoustically driven sequence towards the middle of the show. This worked well, but it was tad too long. The decision to play one of band’s biggest hits “Nemo” acoustically was not received elatedly, but personally I found it interesting and delighting.

After the acoustic part the band picked up the pace in fine matter with four songs starting with “Planet Hell” and ending with cover of Gary Moore’s “Over the Hills and Far Away”. The cover is fairly blank comparing to the iconic original song, but the song did fit well with the fairly simple upbeat songs band played at the end of the concert.
After leaving the stage the band came back for the cover of Finnish national song “Finlandia” written by composer Jean Sibelius. They followed it with shortened version of “Song of Myself”, the highlight from the Imaginaerum and the absolute artistic high of the concert. Everything about this song was simply perfect at this show.
Nightwish closed the 115 minutes long show with “Last Ride of the Day” and a piles of confetti.

The Copenhagen concert proved the scope and diversity of the Finnish band, but it never turned into a glorious experience it was set to be. The audience never felt as a part of this magical world of Nightwish, but rather like dissociated spectators and for this kind of music that’s not enough.
[3/6]

SETLIST
01 - Storytime
02 - Wish I Had an Angel
03 - Amaranth
04 – Scaretale
05 - The Siren
06 - Slow, Love, Slow
07 - I Want My Tears Back
08 - The Crow, the Owl and the Dove
09 - The Islander
10 - Nemo
11 - Last of the Wilds
12 - Planet Hell
13 - Ghost River
14 - Dead to the World
15 - Over the Hills and Far Away
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16 - Finlandia
17 - Song of Myself
18 - Last Ride of the Day