What music are you listening to?

Sweets - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

A new offering from one of my YouTube favourites, Natalia Sarsgård

Released today with her new band, Heaven's Guardian, this is Wall of Shame.

Petulia - The Kooks

Golden Brown - The Stranglers

With their new album Phantoma looming in 2 days, Vancouver power metallers Unleash The Archers dropped another single from it today.

The Funeral - Band of Horses

New album today from Anette Olzon, who fronted Nightwish from 2007 to 2012. Rapture is her third solo album. She has also recorded in a couple groups since leaving Nightwish and works as a nurse as well as being a professional singer.

Continuing with music that has a Nightwish connection, another new album today is the debut album from Finnish supergroup Crownshift. The NW connection is the group's bassist Jukka Koskinen, who has been Nightwish's bassist since 2021.

A few posts up, I posted about Unleash the Archers' new album. Their lead singer, who goes by Brittany Slayes on stage (real name is Hayes), has also been doing some work with Ayreon and Star One, projects of Dutch musical wizard Arjen Lucassen. From Ayreon's new DVD (from a concert last Fall), here's Brittany with The Fate of Man. It's an incredible performance from all concerned, but Brittany really stands out here. She packs a fantastic, and rather unique, set of pipes and is probably edging into my top 5 metal singers now. The two backup singers are actually great singers in their own right (the one further from the camera is the sister of my beloved Floor Jansen), making this one hell of a performance vocally.

American rockers Halestorm dropped a live album and video of their concert at Wembley Arena from last December. And having listened to the whole thing yesterday, you can see why they sold out. Brilliant performance, especially from lead singer Lzzy Hale, who co-founded the band in 1997 with her brother Arejay.

First song I'm sharing is a solo performance by Lzzy.

And a full band number. Lzzy and Arejay were 13 and 10 respectively when the band started and their father played bass for the first couple years. While Roger Hale no longer plays bass, the band remains a family business with Lzzy singing and playing rhythm guitar and piano, Arejay on drums, and Lzzy's partner Joe Hottinger on lead guitar.

And for a change of pace, Lzzy has now stepped in as lead singer of eighties hair metallers Skid Row. Yep, Lzzy Hale is belting "18 and Life" this year.

Going back a few years. Nightwish, including Tarja, Marco, and Jukka, and pre-Troy.

Ever Dream

The new single from Nightwish, Perfume of the Timeless, was released just half an hour ago. It will not become one of my favourite songs from them but is a natural progression from their previous album Human II Nature.

Dang, she beat me to it.😁 I will just blame the time zone difference.

I love this piece after two listens. Tuomas went big, as is his wont, and the theme touches on ideas I used to preach in my UU days (one of things that hooked me on Nightwish in the first place is that resonance with my own thinking).

That said, if I was doing a list of favourite Nightwish songs, I don't know that any of the longer works would make it now. It would be heavy on shorter works like Ever Dream, Nemo, and How's the Heart?. The shorter form seems more intense and personal in Tuomas and Floor's hands. The exception might be Ghost Love Score.

"How's the Heart?" from a live virtual show they did in 2021.

I love everything that Nightwish does and have done. I like the progression their music achieves but, for me, the pinnacle of their sound is the album, Once. That was the album that introduced me to them and it is still my favourite. For me, they are becoming less of a metal band and more of an orchestra.

From Once, this is Planet Hell.

Much as I love Floor, I also love Tarja. Once is their best album for sure. Not a bad track or filled and the original lineup (well, Marko Hietala wasn't original but sure felt like it at times) were at the peak of their power.

Once of the first Nightwish songs I heard was this banger from Once. Tarja and Marko at their finest.

Quote by Mendalla

Much as I love Floor, I also love Tarja. Once is their best album for sure. Not a bad track or filled and the original lineup (well, Marko Hietala wasn't original but sure felt like it at times) were at the peak of their power.

Once of the first Nightwish songs I heard was this banger from Once. Tarja and Marko at their finest.

And, of course, this...

Quote by AnnaMayZing

And, of course, this...

It's telling that I don't even need to play that to know what it is. Still might be Tuomas' finest composition, at least in the metal realm. I recently put together a playlist of Nightwish on my Amazon Music account and Ghost Love Score is the only one of the long works to make the cut (The Poet and The Pendulum might if I expand it further). I call it Nights of Wishing but something better might come along eventually. Ever Dream of Nemo Wishing I Had an Angel or something weird and cutesy like that.

Edit: Actually, the new song is on there and it is 8+ minutes. However, it is mostly there because the album isn't out and you can't really download individual songs for offline play on Amazon. Once the album is out, it might get bumped, especially if I like other songs on Yesterwynde more.