The Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish released “Yesterwynde” yesterday, their 10th studio album. I’ve been following the latest updates for 3 months now, mostly on Youtube, because of the heavy audio component, but I’m pretty sure they’ve been stirring excitement on other social media platforms too. “Yesterwynde” was announced to be big, the final chapter of what over the past 9 years turned out to be a trilogy of albums, and a meditation on history and time passing, our place in the natural world and in a long line of ancestors.
Over the past week I’ve been listening like crazy to the three songs they had already released from the new album, and over the last 3 days to their earliest albums, from the late 90s. The change in sound and lyrics is clearly audible, band members came and went, and yet Nightwish is still here. I, their devoted listener, am still here as well. Even if with a changed biological makeup and refurbished mental furniture. But what changed in me and whose heir am I in this march through time?
nightwish and me
I’ve been listening to Nightwish since the early 2000s, maybe a couple of years before their legendary 2004 album “Once” was released. I can’t really pinpoint the song or even the first songs which brought me to them, but it was that general time in my life when I was just discovering metal and randomly listening to whatever was available through whatever sources were available. I perfectly remember ‘Nemo’ from “Once” playing in a loop, but before that it was ‘Wishmaster’, ‘Ever Dream’ and, of course, ‘Sleeping Sun’. These songs are for me even today the heart of Nightwish. Everything else which came after is merely layers of flesh on this heart of blood.
But with “Yesterwynde” I’m getting the feeling this is changing. I’ve listened to the album several times by now and, without jumping to conclusions too fast, I really want to put it high there with their 2000 classic and purely metal-opera “Wishmaster”. But if “Wishmaster” is a hard ride on a carousel of metal, “Yesterwynde” is a haunting melody of the past and present, weaved together in the now.
The album is more than an abstraction of nostalgic feelings. My favourite songs embody concrete references to world events and world stories. ‘The day of…’ unearths the senseless fears the media throws at people as a way of controlling them and speaks of “the grave new world of ‘84”. This rings at least two literary bells – Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. ‘Sway’ is a melodic tribute to the stories we grow up with, like “your house [which] lands on the witch”, a direct reference to the magic of The Wizard of Oz. The less overt songs are ‘The children of ´Ata’, the story of real-life Lord of the Flies, occurred 10 years after the publication of the novel, and the spine-chilling ‘An Ocean of Strange Islands’ which I listen to as a spin on ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. “Mirrors, mirrors everywhere”. Pun very much intended.
nineteen eighty-four and other ghosts
Listening back and forth between the new “Yesterwynde” and classic Nightwish is a journey I’m taking in parallel to my rereading of classics I’ve first encountered in the early 2010s. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a milestone book for me, and hearing it being referenced in ‘The Day of…’ enlivened some butterflies in my stomach. I read it for the first time in 2012, the first book after moving to Germany. I didn’t really write down impressions of my reading at that time, but one of the shocks which I remember were the gray Victory buildings which Winston returns to after his work at the Ministry of Truth. Only by rereading the book just a couple of years ago, did I realize there is no victory and no truth in a life Orwell fictionalized in his classic novel. The book gives me the same feeling of claustrophobia which I recognize echoed in the Nightwish song. Winston lives a fearful existence under the oppressive politics of Oceania, an existence reengineered by today’s media to keep us pacified and distracted.
I’m currently revisiting Dickens’ Great Expectations, after a first read in 2011. In a review I jotted down back then I complained that “The story is nice, and quite modern, but the feelings which the main character gave me, were not so nice”. Too bad I left it at that. Rereading it now, on the Nightwish canvas, I’m riding deep emotional currents stirred by songs which draw on our love of stories, such as ‘Sway’ and ‘Spider Silk’. Just like Pip romanticizes his expectations, we too are often quickly entrapped by stories of adventure and escape. There is wonder and imagination in the world of story, but too quickly does harsh reality step in. The big reveal awaits us all, as the song goes.
time passing
For me, listening to the new Nightwish album mirrored the experience of revisiting a classic novel, and each listen, like each reread, reveals new meaning. “Yesterwynde” transitions between grand orchestral arrangements and quiet, reflective moments. There are moments that feel nostalgic, as if the music is looking back on itself, while other tracks project a forward momentum. Especially the final song, ‘Lanternlight’, shoves me back into a pocket of time which I can only compare to being entrapped in the sound of ‘Sleeping Sun’. Emotionally, both songs leave me exhausted.
On the other hand, there’s nothing I can compare ‘The Children of ´Ata’ with. The song stands out as a reflection on events on the past and what we make of them now, in the present. As I see it, Nightwish makes a bold statement with “Yesterwynde”, perfectly embodied in ‘´Ata’: “We were there We’re still here”.
I’m not sure if Nightwish grew a second heart with “Yesterwynde”. I will need a bit of time and quite some more switching back and forth between their albums to decide. What I do know is that the songs of the album leave behind this ghostly feeling that everything is connected and we, I, am part of everything. Winston, Pip, Dorothy, to which I add Alice, Jane Eyre and Mary Lennox, are the stones in the ground I grew out of, just as my grand-parents and their grand-parents are my literal life. So yeah, basically. I am their heir. I am dust on their palm. I am because of a million loves. And this leaves me deeply grateful.
your thoughts?