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/

All ratings are out of 10. Rating may not be a whole number.

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/

All ratings are out of 10. Rating may not be a whole number.

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/

All ratings are out of 10. Rating may not be a whole number.

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/

All ratings are out of 10. Rating may not be a whole number.

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/

All ratings are out of 10. Rating may not be a whole number.