NUCLEAR BLAST has issued the following:

British webzine Finland Calling – specialized in heavy music from Finland – are offerering the chance for 30 people to win an exclusive copy of the upcoming NIGHTWISH single “Storytime”, taken from their new masterpiece “Imaginaerum” which is scheduled to be released on December 2nd , plus an “Imaginaerum” and “Dark Passion Play” poster. Click here to find out more, and be in for a chance to win: http://www.finlandcalling.com/2011/10/31/exclusive-nightwish-competition/

ROADRUNNER has issued the following:

Nathan Scott of FinlandCalling.com recently interviewed Nightwish mainman Tuomas Holopainen at the Gibson Guitars offices in London. The two discussed the band’s upcoming album Imaginaerum (out January 10 in the US), the accompanying film, their live plans and more.

Holopainen explains that the band has only minimal roles in the film, saying, “The most important thing is that we are trying to make a believable movie that will actually tell the story and be emotional to people. And we wouldn’t have been believable actors. I think people might have preconceptions about us. It’s the same thing you know, I don’t care how good of an actor Justin Timberlake is, but whenever I see him in a movie I’m a bit ‘ookaay’. He’s very good, but he’s still Justin Timberlake. So that’s the symptom that we’re trying to avoid. The director also originally wanted us to have bigger parts, but we told him ‘Please don’t make us say a single line.'”

FinlandCalling.com recently conducted an interview with keyboardist/mainman Tuomas Holopainen of Finnish/Swedish symphonic metallers NIGHTWISH. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

FinlandCalling.com: When you have an idea or are inspired by anything, do you have to write it down or does it just stay with you?

Tuomas: I always have my notebook with me and I always have a dictaphone with me, so if I just get an idea I write it immediately. It happens so many times that you get a killer idea, you think, “It’s so good I’ll never forget this” initially, and then I do.

FinlandCalling.com: I don’t know if you can tell me very much about this, you probably want to keep it a secret, but have you planned any visuals for the stage yet?

Tuomas: We’re in the planning stage as we speak. It was yesterday when I talked to the guy who’s making the props, so nothing concrete, but there will definitely be the pyros and maybe some screens, since now we’re making a movie, it would make sense to put some stuff from the movie there. Maybe some props related to the film or stage. We’ll have a Celtic pipe player with us for the entire tour, so that’s something unique too. It’s being planned!

FinlandCalling.com: You said that one day you were hoping to play the Royal Albert Hall. Is that still an ambition of yours?

Tuomas: Yeah, it all started when we started to think that we need to do this show with the orchestra and the choir at least once in our life. And where would we do it? Well the natural location would be the Royal Albert Hall because we want to use the same orchestra and the choir that we usually do. And to fly over 100 people somewhere else in England…. I think London would be the perfect place for that.

FinlandCalling.com: Have you planned it for this tour, or it just something that you want to do, but haven’t turned it into practice yet?

Tuomas: We haven’t made any concrete plans about it, and it’s something that, when we do it, needs to be so well planned in a big way, and it’s going to take years of planning. I have my doubts that it will be on this tour, but maybe after the third album with Anette, we would be ready to do that. The thing is that WITHIN TEMPTATION did a wonderful DVD and show with the orchestra, DIMMU BORGIR, OPETH…. And these are all such wonderful releases, so we need to find a new angle to do it as well, so we need to put a lot of thought into it. It’s not just about playing with the orchestra. It will be cool, but we want to take it a bit further.

FinlandCalling.com: How different was it for you now that you had Anette [Olzon, vocals] as a member of the band for a while and knew her voice and abilities, while on “Dark Passion Play” you didn’t know who was going to be providing the vocals for your work?

Tuomas: It wasn’t as different as you would imagine, actually. It was just that now I had a concrete voice in my head doing the vocals when I was writing the songs, and I knew her vocal range, her strengths and weaknesses. But it wasn’t much different. I think she sounds fab on the new album. Something happened to her, I mean she did a wonderful job on “Dark Passion Play”, but her singing is now taken to a different level on “Imaginaerum”. It’s not about me writing the songs for her voice, it’s about her being relaxed and confident. After surviving the tour, after surviving the fans’ reaction, maybe she feels like she’s in the band and she can be herself, her versatile self.

FinlandCalling.com: In the press release you said “Imaginaerum” stands as a testament to what NIGHTWISH have always been about. Taking it further, how would you then describe what NIGHTWISH is all about to someone who has either not heard the album or is completely new to the band?

Tuomas: It’s a bit of a melodramatic statement, to be honest. I just realized at some point that “Imaginaerum” is in the very core of the truth that NIGHTWISH is about. And it’s about celebration of life, the privilege of existence and all the beautiful, fantastic stuff on the planet. Gospel of imagination and memory… being with the band from the very first song we did. It’s about the celebration of imagination.

FinlandCalling.com: On a completely different topic, would you ever do a feature with a band from an entirely different genre?

Tuomas: I’m not a prisoner of genre by any means, I listen to all kinds of music. For me it has everything to do with the feeling and the song itself, so… I definitely see myself doing something completely different or working with people from other genres as well.

FinlandCalling.com: Have you considered an acoustic gig at all?

Tuomas: I love acoustic stuff, and I’m sure that something that we will do with NIGHTWISH in the future as well. There would be even a full-length acoustic album, acoustic shows… I’m pretty sure.

Read the entire interview from FinlandCalling.com. Source: Blabbermouth.net

Radio Metal recently conducted an interview with keyboardist/mainman Tuomas Holopainen of Finnish/Swedish symphonic metallers NIGHTWISH. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Radio Metal: What is your assessment of your first tour with Anette [Olzon] as a singer? What reactions did you witness and what are your thoughts on them?

Tuomas: I would give the whole tour an A-. We really didn’t know what to expect, how the fans would react. All the signs of a major catastrophe were there at some point, because you just don’t know how people will react. But we had a lot of confidence in her, and we had a really strong album with “Dark Passion Play”. So we had the confidence, but we still didn’t know. The tour was really long, really hard, and at some point people from the band and the crew started dropping like flies, but we still managed to do it and feel really happy and proud about it.

Radio Metal: You wrote “Dark Passion Play” without knowing exactly what voice was going to bring it to life. For “Imaginaerum”, on the other hand, you knew exactly what Anette was capable of. Do you think the album is better for this reason?

Tuomas: I think one of the most obvious things you hear when you listen to “Imaginaerum” is the vocal work. It’s on a different level. You can really hear her confidence. On “Dark Passion Play”, she was still a bit uncertain. She told me that all the while she was afraid she would be kicked out of the band if she sang poorly. But she sounds really good and more versatile on this album. There’s also the fact that I was able to write all the songs for her exact vocal range. I knew her strengths, I knew her weaknesses, so it was a bit easier this time.

Radio Metal: The album sounds much more like a soundtrack than a collection of songs. Ultimately, that’s what you always wanted to do in your career, right?

Tuomas: Soundtracks have been a driving force in my songwriting for years and years. I guess on “Imaginaerum”, it’s taken to the maximum. The most concrete reason for that is that we’re actually doing a movie. All the songs on the album are made for certain scenes in the movie. Before the first note was written, I had the idea of what the story was about: the jazz club, the ghosts, the Arabian death dance… All of those songs were made for these stories. That’s the major reason why the album ended up being so soundtrackish.

Radio Metal: Why did you not do it earlier? Did you really need a movie to write movie music, if you see what I mean? Since it’s something you love so much, did you really need the images to go along with the music?

Tuomas: It’s always been about creating the kind of music that the listener would see as much as hear. But before this album, I guess we were always happy with the audio aid. We didn’t need the visuals. But after “Dark Passion Play”, I just figured that this was so insanely big and diverse that we could no longer take it to the next level with just the music. That’s when I felt it strongly for the first time. Even after the “Once” album, I thought we could make it even bigger and better, but not after “Dark Passion Play”. Then it occurred to me, if we can’t do it with the music alone, let’s add another dimension, a visual dimension, to it.

Radio Metal: This new album is a firework of different influences and styles, and both Marco and Anette do things that we’ve never heard from them before. Like you said, there’s this very jazzy song, with a “Twin Peaks” vibe to it. Was this melting pot of different things sparked by this huge project? Was the movie the thing you really needed to start afresh and renew yourself musically?

Tuomas: I’m not sure we needed the movie. It was just a whole new idea to create an album. (long pause)

Radio Metal: In other words, do you think you would have written a song like this very jazzy track without the movie, for example?

Tuomas: To be honest, I don’t know. That particular song was based on a certain scene that had to be included in the movie. That’s why it’s there; once you see the movie, you’ll understand why this “Twin Peaks” song is in there. But, to be honest, I don’t know how to answer the question… But you were also asking about the versatility and the different elements. It’s more varied than ever before. I think it has to do with the fact that this is a thematic album, about the celebration of life, the privilege of life and all the wonderful, beautiful things we have in here. It’s about the versatility of everything we experience. That’s why we wanted to include all the elements that we could possibly put into 75 minutes of music, from the dark, jazzy stuff to the childhood nightmares of “Scare Tale”, to the Arabic influences, to the Celtic, having-fun kind of vibe, to the funeral procession of “Rest Calm”. It’s all the aspects of life.

Read the entire interview from Radio Metal. Source: Blabbermouth.net