Nightwish - Dark Passion Play [2007]

The first track of this album and let's not fuck around, the music is epic. However, it only takes the very first vocal line to make me miss Tarja. Sure, the new broad is a good singer, but she sings mostly in a pop style, which comes across as out of place and obnoxiously bitchy. Some of the transitions in the middle of the song feel a bit lazy as well. "Bye Bye Beautiful" is a throw-away song, but then "Amaranth" is a great popcorn song that's catchy and displays some of the better sides of the new girl's voice. "Cadence of Her Last Breath" has a pretty catchy chorus. Whereas "Master Passion Greed" is a waste of some good guitar riffs ruined by the vocals, an awful chorus, and piss-poor lyrics. "Eva" is a nice and beautiful song where the vocal stylings of Anette actually make sense. Overall, the music on this album is quite good. It doesn't have the feel and emotion of "Once", but it's still fairly proficient song writing. However, there are still quite a few fillers and more than a few riffs that just sound like they were thrown in there to lengthen the song. The lyrics throughout the album are just bad, though, and Anette's vocals are quite unwelcomed in my ears. You get the feeling that she is quite proficient in classical singing, but rarely uses it. Lower score for almost ruining the music with crap vocals and lyrics.

Rating: 7.5

http://www.nightwish.com/

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Nightwish - Once [2004]

For the most part, this album could not be more different from Century Child. Epic songwriting and the best of their entire career (including Dark Passion Play). This is the proper way to integrate Orchestra and Metal to create a masterpiece. There is much less of the gimmicky songwriting that I hated from CC. The writing of the orchestra parts has finally become respectable on a Classical level as well. However, it's quite a long album with a decent amount of fillers in between the amazing songs.

Rating: 8.5

http://www.nightwish.com/

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Nightwish - Century Child [2002]

It's fairly catchy stuff. The production quality is mediocre, but the bass-drum sound is pretty much crap. My biggest problem with the album is that they use gimmicky song writing techniques rather than the respectable complexity that can be found on later albums. The songwriting is not really up to par for a Nightwish album. Mostly uninspired, campy, and fairly boring. The catchiness can only make up for so much.

Rating: 5

http://www.nightwish.com/

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...and Oceans - SYNÆSTHESIA - The Requiem Reveries [2007]

Pretty good first track, the rest is straight up industrial.

Rating: 6

http://www.myspace.com/andoceans1

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...and Oceans - Cypher [2002]

Heard this album a couple times before. The industrial is completely integrated into the music, now… there's absolutely no separation. More catchy and much more heavy. I do miss the grinding drums, though.

Rating: 8

http://www.myspace.com/andoceans1

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...and Oceans - A.M.G.O.D. [2001]

Wow, less than ten seconds into the first track and I can already tell there's a HUGE difference in the style of the guitars. Definitely the first CD where they heavily used the industrial effects with Black Metal. It's very well done and used to great effect throughout the album. One of the things I really like about this album is that it has more grinding and thrash elements than their proceeding album. Pretty catchy, too.

Rating: 7.5

http://www.myspace.com/andoceans1

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...and Oceans - The Symmetry of I - The Circle of O [1999]

Cool keys and guitar riff right-off-the-bat. Powerful vox. Really cool stuff, nice key sections that blend well with the guitars to give that "nice" Black Metal feel. There's much more grinding on the drums than the last album. On disc 2, the first track has really cool use of techno / industrial effects that are calming. Seems like disc 2 is going to be just industrial effects… interesting. There's some dabbling in the techno stuff in disc 1 and used in a pretty unique way. Plus the production is definitely better than TDGoT. Disc 2's effects are kind of corny at some points.

Rating: 7

http://www.myspace.com/andoceans1

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...and Oceans - The Dynamic Gallery of Thoughts [1998]

Weird beginning, but when the keys kick in, it's fucking nice as hell. Definitely more traditional Black Metal than their later works. It's really strange, like a completely different band. There's some really fucking fast grinding in here. A few strange vox in T3. T5 has a killer beginning techno thing that reminds me of the dystopian society of Blade Runner. Cool CD. Not nearly as ground-breaking as their later efforts, but there's still plenty of the techno/industrial element and some unique song-writing. The production quality is what I'd expect from a Black Metal band's first album, though it is still better than most debuts.

Rating: 6.5

http://www.myspace.com/andoceans1

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Nightwish - Over the Hills and Far Away [2001]

T1 is great. However, for such a short CD, there aren't a lot of great songs. So it drags at more than a few parts and even get's monotonous once or twice.

Rating: 7

http://www.nightwish.com/

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Nightwish - Oceanborn [1998]

As is typical with most Nightwish albums, this one starts off epic and very energetic. Good and catchy first song. Let's see if they can hold it all the way through the album for once… Definitely still have me at track 3. This is probably their best album overall. At most, one song may be filler, but the rest of the writing is very even in its quality. The production isn't as crystal clear as their later albums, but it's hardly anything to scoff at. However, despite the fact that the overall writing on this album is great, it definitely lacks the high-points of some of their later albums.

Rating: 8

http://www.nightwish.com/

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Thyrane - Travesty of Heavenly Essence [2005]

Starts off very unexpected for a black metal album. I've never ever heard natural harmonics used in BM. Damn-good production quality. Nice and heavy guitars. First song doesn't have much grinding, but it's got a bit of a thrashy feel to it. Awesome use of melody in the guitars. They create an extremely unique sound. Cool keys… very fitting for the music. Second track starts with more of the very well-crafted melody in guitars. Slows down a little. Album has a surprisingly modern feel, but it never detracts from the Black Metal created within. Really cool so far. Track three kicks in with fast thrash and then hit's the grind pretty hard… fucking cool. Really awesome guitar work in the middle of the T3… modern feel but then kicks into this crazy-cool arpeggio riff. Track 5 has this fucking beautiful section to it that almost brings tears to my eyes. 3 Songs from the end and I can say that within a few songs there seemed to be a lull or two in the action, but it's never for long and the songs don't miss a moment in picking back up and kicking into an awesome riff. The use of keys in this album is fucking phenomenal. I would've liked to see more use of keys in this manner, but now I'm nit-picking. At some points, the drumming is amazing as well. Overall this is damn creative guitar work, heavy, catchy, but still always Black Metal at heart.

Rating: 8

http://www.myspace.com/thyranefans

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