Friday 1 March 2013

A Night at the Opera, a Day in the Moshpit

Opera metal.
For me it began some time over at my sister's flat. This would have to be more than ten years ago, in Christchurch. At the time I'd been seriously digging on Evanescence. Their debut 'Fallen' had just come out, slipped in under the radar really, I'd picked it up off a shelf in a CD store, where they'd been playing on the in-store stereo system. I'd never heard of them. This was before the glorious days of broadband and Wikipedia, hell...I could barely even use a computer and then all I had access to was dial-up. This was before the Evanescence Zeitgeist and I thought they had something really spectacular going on: nu-metal crunch fronted by a woman blessed with a very powerful voice, arrangements that had a whiff of the Gothic about them. Yada yada.
But no, this isn't about Evanescence - a band that long passed from being required listening in my CD collection. I'm not even sure where my copy of the disc is now.

See, my sister knew the way my tastes had been drifting and thought I needed to hear something with a bit more substance, something less faddish and transitory. She played me Nightwish. The video-clip was murky, very blue. There was a lot of eye-liner. In hindsight it must have been 'Bless the Child' the single off their freshly released album 'Century Child' but I didn't know that then. All I knew was that this was something audacious, incredible and very different to anything else I'd heard. Now, I'd been a huge fan of Bathory's 'Twilight of the Gods' album and My Dying Bride's 'Like Gods of the Sun' so I knew that Classical music and Metal could not only be combined, but could create something truly impressive in the process. I'd even heard another of my sister's discs - one that paired German Speed Metal band Rage with an orchestra for re-workings of their more popular songs (similar to what Metallica had done, except genuinely worth listening to).

This wasn't just strings, swathes of keyboards, and a Classically-influenced sense of drama. This was frigging Opera, man. This was metal transformed into something beautiful; into a work of art. And so, for me, it began.

I just call it Opera metal, it's been labelled a bunch of other things by many critics, Symphonic metal being a popular classification, but for me it has to have those vocals to count...it has to have that powerful, Classically-trained voice. The genre didn't start with Nightwish (Swedish band Therion beat them to the punch and are magnificent in their own right), but they were the pioneers of a particular interpretation of the sound and one that has been consistently and continuously imitated, adapted and evolved into something else.

The vocalist's name is Tarja Turunen. She possesses a conservatory-trained mezzo-soprano voice with a wonderfully rich middle register. Her voice has a glorious dark timbre and conveyes a wonderful sense of melancholy. There is much use of controlled, sweeping vibrato. Her delivery utilises a smooth legato and carefully sustained notes (what metal critics often refer to as 'opera chants'). Delicate coloratura ornamentation is utilised but Turunen reserves it for dramatic effect. Her's is an extremely well-judged performance. Later albums ('Century Child' onwards) find her focussing more on her head voice, as well as varying her Classical technique with a more naturalistic delivery: while this permits her to consistently reach higher notes it also means that her voice appears to lack some of the power of her earlier recordings, her chest voice being noticeably more resonant on the first three discs. To me then, knowing precious little about vocal technique, it was an astonishing voice. A treasure. Turunen is also a striking-looking woman. She has a glacial quality, wide, sharply-defined cheekbones and a faintly Slavic cast to her face. She looks tall. Statuesque is a word that springs to mind. I'd always imagined she would perform at a remove from the rest of the band; as though delivering a lost Mozart Aria, but no, I've seen some live footage now and she rocks out with considerable enthusiasm, head-banging to match the best of them.

The rest of the band are almost equally compelling: mastermind and keyboard virtuoso Tuomas Holopainen favours wildly elaborate arrangements (with incredibly dextrous, prog-influenced playing). He's also a rather dashing figure, working the tortured poet schtick for all its worth; he broods intensely, seemingly determined to smoulder his way out of every band photo ever. Pocket-edition shred-machine; the endlessly smirking Emppu Vuorinen handles the guitar duties with apparent delight and considerable finesse. Jukka Nevalainen is not just a remarkably proficient drummer, with a nice precise delivery, but he has also apparently never met a bandanna that he could say no to. A part of me suspects that their original bassist was jettisoned from the band because he simply didn't look interesting enough (he's kind of a regular long-haired metal dude) - that they replaced him with a deranged Viking guy with a twin-braided goatee (here's looking at you, Marco Hietala) only seems to reinforce that notion.

But first, a rant. Tarja Turunen's presence in Nightwish often highlights an extremely ugly element of metal fandom. There are screeds of message boards seemingly dedicated to debating whether she's hot or not and how well she rates against her replacement in Nightwish (more on that later) Annette Olzon in the 'bangable' department. A lot of very abusive, misogynistic terms have been bandied about - there are quite a few who do not care for her. One reviewer described her figure as 'erection-inducing'. Another critic (some panting douchebag over on the Global Domination site) consistently and casually refers to her by perhaps the most grotesque and objectifying term I've ever heard applied to a woman (I won't type it but suffice to say it suggests she can be reduced to a receptacle for semen). Granted this loser congratulated himself heartily when he discovered he could rhyme the first name of Dutch powerhouse vocalist Floor Jansen (ex-After Forever, and in an interesting segue - currently fronting Nightwish for their tour) with 'whore', he also casually refers to women, any woman, as 'sluts'. All this suggests that this dude has some serious frigging issues and probably shouldn't be let out of the house without a court-appointed minder. I mean, Jesus. What relevance does her physical appearance have to do with anything. She's not some kind of sexual puppet of the band - an onanistic prop for all the mouth-breathing fanboys out there. She's an immensely skilled artist. Beyond that she's a person, for the love of God. I mean, the guys in Nightwish are hardly slouches in the looks department (even Hietala is all right if you fancy a bit of rough) but I've never encountered a female fan dubbing them 'lubrication-inducing (which sounds horribly clinical anyway), or for that matter a male fan also deeming them 'erection-inducing'; I'm assuming homosexuality continues to exist even within metal's hermetically-sealed boundaries (it must do, look at Manowar). Basically what I'm saying is that this kind of behaviour only reinforces the stereotypes people already hold about the metal community - stereotypes which for the majority are groundless. And as a huge fan of a wide variety of metal bands and artists, I don't want to be judged for the antics of a handful of drooling subhumanoids.
Anyway, deep breaths. Now, where was I...

Before they were a metal band Nightwish were a darkened neo-folk experiment; their instrumentation primarily focused on dense, atmospheric keyboards, acoustic guitar, delicate flutes, percussion and Turunen's haunting voice. The ghost of this lingers on their debut album 'Angels Fall First' but it is supplanted in part by a much heavier, mid-paced metal sound. First single 'The Carpenter' even evokes some of the grand sound of 'Twilight of the Gods'-era Bathory - with thick bass underlying a plucked, folkish guitar. It is also one of the very few tracks of which Holopainen sings. His is a curious voice: a hushed, untrained tenor, he sounds almost tentative as if hoping the music will cloak him somehow. He gains a little confidence when Turunen joins him for the sweeping chorus. It is unexpectedly endearing. It also boasts a wonderful instrumental bridge that matches a guitar solo with a flute and keyboard display, set to a Middle eastern rhythm. The song closes out with grandiose, wordless operatics from Turunen. On another track; the unfortunately entitled 'Nymphomaniac Fantasia' Tuomas (who writes all the lyrics and composes all the music) gamely tackles female sexuality. The result is lyrically a bit...awkward but the song itself is excellent, boasting a fine performance from Turunen and more of those flutes. There are a lot of flutes on Nightwish albums. It is a delightful album, charming in it's slight naivety; the first steps of a band on their way to somewhere quite extraordinary.

It's the second album however: the monolithic 'Oceanborn' that really brings a new genre of music to life. Here Nightwish adopt a much heavier, more ornate sound. Effectively it's neo-classical power metal - a genre chiefly defined by elaborate and incredibly melodic guitar runs and complex twin-guitar dueling, Nightwish only have the one guitarist and so the duels are instead between Holopainen on keys and Vuorinen on guitars. Each lightning run matched by the other (I swear Holopainen comes very close to playing 'Flight of the Bumblebee' at one point). Turunen's voice is matchless here, she has gained confidence since the debut and this album pushes her to the fore. A small string section garnishes several of the tracks but the overall impression is of the keyboards - slightly proggy and listening again after all these years, actually a little dated (the keys sound a little thin and twee when compared with the elaborate synth-settings of today, when an entire 100 piece orchestra can be realistically simulated). Again, some of the lyrics carry a Christian theme : the song 'Gethsemane', also one of the album's highlights. 'Sleeping Sun', a song added after the album's first pressing, is perhaps one of the most extraordinarily beautiful pieces they've recorded, certainly a career highlight for Turunen who simply shines.

But...another frigging aside.
The first instance of this sound (or a sound that could have served as an origin point or an echo of this), as far as I can discern, was in 1985 on the soundtrack to one of Dario Argento's flicks. 'Phenomena' starring a startlingly-young Jennifer Connolly. It is a great and glorious fever dream of a flick, Argento in top form, boasting pike-killings, a mutant child, a pit of rotting bodies, a waterfall inside a mountain, and a load of psychic insects. It's nuts. It also has what is simultaneously one of the most awesome and most ill-advised soundtracks ever. No soundtrack that boasts Iron Maiden and Motorhead could ever be judged less than absolute killer, but when those same bands are used to soundtrack a moody scene in which a young girl hides in an abandoned wing of a girl's school to escape a creeping killer....well, we have a problem. But the theme, composed by Claudio Simonetti, is what I'm really talking about. An incredible piece of music; it combines a prog-style keyboard pattern with heavy electric guitar and a wordless Operatic vocal. When I first heard the piece (In Museo di Crminale; a Florentine wax museum dedicated to serial killers) my first thought was: Nightwish? But no, they didn't even exist at that point in time. It's easy enough to see how Simonetti came to compose the piece: prog keyboards are the hallmark of his band Goblin, the heavy guitar is to match with the rest of the soundtrack, and the Opera bit...well, the dude is Italian. Now, I don't know if Holopainen has ever even heard this piece of music, but it is the very earliest piece that I know of to hint at the mammoth and glorious genre of music that Opera metal would one day become.
Okay, I'm done.

'Oceanborn' still stands as one of metals finest and most influential albums. It was followed by 'Wishmaster' a superb release that shifted the instrumental focus to the guitars and brought in a small choir to occasionally accompany Turunen. On this disc she focuses more on her upper register and the results are impressive, particularly the very sword-and-sorcery themed title track, which is an explosion of drama and intensity, also oddly catchy. Bravely this album also addresses the Columbine shootings with the dark and disturbing number 'The Kinslayer'. Perhaps even more controversially (in a metal context, at least) Holopainen reveals his love of Disney flicks.

'Century Child' introduces a much darker, denser sound and Hietala's beard. It sounds much less dated than the previous releases, offering considerably heavier, down-tuned bass and Hietala's voice: a magnificent rasping tenor howl that forms a ravening, bestial counterpoint to Turunen's polished tones. Together they tackle 'Phantom of the Opera' with Turunen executing the deliberately difficult climactic coloratura with aplomb and Hietala gnashing his was through the Phantom's part (to this day no other rendition of the Phantom sounds adequately menacing enough to my ears).

Their fifth and final album with Turunen saw them hit the big time. A vast, ambitious whirlwind of an album 'Once' boasts the same orchestra as that featured in the 'Lord of the Rings' score. Bolstered by a huge choir and featuring a greater vocal presence from Hietala, Tarja's voice is pushed deeper into the mix, as a result it seems weaker and less overtly Operatic (although all her Classical techniques are still utilised and she is as ever, immediately recognizable. You can feel the shift occur. The power metal influences of the earlier discs are now gone. The songs are down-tuned and heavy, even bearing a slight industrial/dance influence. It is a magnificent disc nonetheless: bold, dynamic and utterly epic.

Then they fired her, in an open letter that can still be found on the internet if you choose to look for it.
She was replaced by the pixieish Annette Olzon, whose voice was not in any way Classically-trained (she used to sing in an ABBA covers band). Since then Nightwish have released two albums - both of which are still striking, powerful recordings, but they are not Opera Metal. They are Symphonic Melodic Metal with a strong pop influence. They have sold millions of copies.
Olzon has since quit.

Tarja Turunen has gone on to release three albums under her own name (one a collection of Finnish Christmas songs - in purely Classical style). Her vocals on both of the later albums ('My Winter Storm' & 'What Lies Beneath') are superb, among the finest she's ever done. The arrangements lean more towards light Classical with a strong heavy rock and Gothic influence (bearing thick down-tuned guitars that recall Rammstein more than her previous band), effectively they are Classical crossover albums with every trace of that genre's typical granny-pleasing blandness excised - how Sarah Brightman's 'Symphony' album should have sounded; to judge by its artwork and the first full track 'Les Fleurs du Mal'.  There are flourishes of electronica here and there. They are hooky and compelling and it is good to hear the sheer power of her voice still.

And the genre that Nightwish (and Therion - I will get to them in a later post) helped pioneer has exploded off in dozens of different directions. Introducing a wonderful feminine component to a typically male-dominated musical realm, and an unexpected delicacy to something better known for its brutality.

Or, as a friend once said, after hearing Nightwish: 'I thought metal was all angry guys shouting, but this is really quite fancy.'






4 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Metal does not need female vocals to be beautiful. Or even an orcheastra. Some of the earlier power metal achieved the power and the splendour without any extra trappings - not even keyboards. Look at Bathory - half the time he didn't even have a drummer!

      The whole Tarja/Annette who is better debate (musically, not appearance wise) reminds me of the Michael Kiske/Andi Deris split within Helloween fans. Of course, for someone who claims to not want to be into metal, Kiske certainly does like performing with other artists - Avantasia, Amanda Somerville, Gamma Ray... And now he's back with Kai Hansen. I think he secretly DOES love metal. Or, if not, it's never going to let him go!

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  2. You're right about metal being able to achieve beauty without all those trappings - one that springs to mind is 'Twilight of the Gods' actually: just Quorthon, some guitars, a bass, keyboards and a drum machine and that album is utterly epic and oddly beautiful.

    Michael Kiske's voice is really very sweet - does he still have his full, youthful range? I think you're right, he does love a bit of the metal. Turunen actually said similar things (about wanting to move away from metal) but it's still there down deep in her music, in her soul. Metal has you for life.

    And yeah, you're right: fans can be a strange and bitter bunch at times. They (we, I guess) often treat artists, bands etc as if we - the fans - are owed something. We're not really, if anything, we owe the artists a great deal - after all it is their work that enhances our lives. And Nightwish is still Nightwish with or without Turunen, but I do miss her operatics and presence on the Olzon years. They should totally lock in Floor Jansen as a replacement though - that's a fine match.

    Glad you enjoyed your cameo. I expect you'll appear in many more - your blog is one of the reasons I'm now digging through my metal classics.

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    1. His voice has matured now, of course (as he has) but he still has a pretty wide range. He can do four octaves, most musicians of the genres I like are considered "almost four" - I need to find what each of those octaves are to better word my blog posts. Roy Khan (ex-Kamelot) can apparently do almost five octaves. He was also in Conception, I think I might have one of their cassettes?

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