Nightwish - Episode 9 (Yesterwynde)

Our Nightwish series concludes as we explore the band’s latest album, Yesterwynde, and reflect on the incredible journey of one of the most influential bands in the symphonic metal world.

In this episode, we dive into the themes and musical direction of Yesterwynde, while, as always, highlighting and dissecting the hidden gems from the album — those tracks that may not always get the attention they deserve. We also take a step back to wrap up the series, looking at Nightwish’s evolution across the years and sharing some final thoughts on their legacy within the metal world.

For any requests for future episodes, please email: RandM.HiddenGems.Podcast@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Hello and welcome to our final episode in our Nightwish series on Rap and Metal's Hidden Gems podcast. I am your host, as always, Daniel Stucky, and thank you once again for joining us on this bittersweet day when we will say goodbye to Nightwish as we conclude our Nightwish series with their final and most recent studio release, Yesterwind. Now, if you haven't heard any of our previous Nightwish episodes, I highly recommend you do We Tell You the Nightwish story from start to the current present time with Yesterwind. We tell the story of how they formed different band members leaving and joining, how the sound of the band evolved from the original concept of an acoustic campfire folk band into this massive symphonic metal juggernauts that they are today. We also cover each studio album in chronological order, as always, as everything should be covered. And most importantly, we pick out those two or three hidden gem tracks from each studio release. Those tracks that are not promotional singles, didn't have a music video, don't have the fanfare and the coverage that the big songs get. These are the unloved, underappreciated songs in the Nightwitch back catalogue. And I highly recommend you go back and listen to those. But today is our final episode in the series, and today we are covering the most recent album as of this recording, Yester Why. Episode 8 in our series, we covered uh the 2020 studio release Human Nature. We touched upon the promotional singles from Human Nature, and we dissected into the hidden gem tracks, my opinion, on human nature. I won't name them, so you can go back and listen to episode eight and have the surprise of discovering what they are if you haven't heard that episode already. Uh but we closed off uh quite importantly in the Nightwitch story after the human nature release, and I say world tour, there wasn't really one because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in 2021, January, bassist and like second uh vocalist, whenever they need some raspy male metal vocals, uh Marco Heatala leaves Nightwish. His choice, unlike previous uh band members that have left in his statement, which I read out in full in the previous episode, in short, it was chronic depression and disillusionment with the music scene as a whole that caused him to leave Nightwish as well as kind of his age. He's older than the other band members. He's been in this world for longer, both in terms of just being born earlier, but also in the uh music industry longer with his original band, Tarot, which uh formed prior to Nightwish forming. And in my opinion, also, I feel uh Marco wanted more creative control than he was able to get in Nightwish, with Nightwish being keyboardist two Amos's baby, he's the founding member, he was his original idea, he's the primary songwriter. Yes, Marco has some co-credits here and there, and in some cases, like the song The Islander of Dark Passion play, he even wrote and performed the entire thing solely 100% a Marco Hiatala song. However, I think he wanted to go back and have that more creative control in his own project, which he did with his own solo band now, the Marco Hiatala Project. And in my opinion, Marco leaving is a big loss for Nightwish. Not just for his ability on the bass guitar, but the vocals is gonna be nearly impossible for Nightwish to replace. And spoiler, they don't even try to replace it, they just get a bass guitarist in. They're not looking for a bass guitarist slash male vocalist because they know it's gonna be so hard to find. And if they do find it, it's not gonna live up to what Monaco did prior. It's gonna feel like a less than copycat. So they didn't even try, they just brought a bass guitarist in. And that bass guitarist is uh in another band along with Nightwish drummer Kai Hato. Uh, that band being Winter Sun and that bass guitarist being Yucca Koskinan from Finland. So Yuka's joined the band, and this is his first studio record with Nightwish. It's released in September of 2024, and that is the most recent album to come out from the band called Yesterwind. Now, Yesterwind, it's actually the 10th studio release from Nightwish, and it became like the kind of finale of a trilogy of albums in terms of concept, and I guess also it coincides with uh singer Flor Jansen joining the band. So it's like a trilogy of Flor Jansen albums too. The first one being Endless Form's Most Beautiful, the second being the one we covered in the previous episode, 2020's Human Nature, and then the third and final of the trilogy, Yesterwind. And the concept of Yesterwind, it's similar to Endless Form's Most Beautiful and Human Nature, in that Tuomos advised the album explores themes of humanism, history, and their inspirations, emphasizing the overall outlook of the album as positive and optimistic. If you remember back to previous Nightwish episodes, the subject matter that Tuomos writes his songs about, he sees himself as a poet, a composer, obviously he is. But early on, on the really early Nightwish albums like Angel's Falls First, he's writing songs about just anything he can get his mind across. For example, there's a song based on the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast. There's one based on Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse called Phantasmic, which is named after the fireworks show at the end of one of the Disneyland theme park uh days. I think it's in the Hollywood Studios, what's called MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida. So he's just writing about his interests. And there are songs like uh Nymphomaniac Fantasia where he's kind of singing more about lust and I guess attractiveness to the opposite sex. Uh Tulmos being like a teenager or I guess a young 20-year-old at this time. It's quite immature. But he does slowly lean more into the personal subject matter, and that's when you get a lot of the songs about his unrequited love for former lead singer Talia, uh, especially on albums like Century Child. Talia leaves, and then you get a few albums that are all about kind of, I guess, Talia leaving and the effect that had on Tuomos, his depression, his dead boy, uh, his loss of childhood innocence that he loved so much, and you get that in Dark Passion Play. And the Dead Boy actually dies on that album, specifically on the song The Poet and the Pendulum. And then he moves on, and we get the album Imaginarium, which is all about uh imagination, storytelling, inspirations from Tuamos. You know, we're talking about, as if, for example, in the song Storytime, we're talking about Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, etc., etc. That is the idea of Imaginarium, and then we come into the Flor Janssen era and this trilogy, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Human Nature, and Yes to Wind. And this is when Tuomos' uh ideology and his interests in life that he's writing about, he's obviously reading more dissertations, essay papers, scientific books about biology, human nature, things from Richard Dawkins, evolution, etc. etc. And in these three albums, Science, Nature, Human Evolution, uh, they all play the key key part. And that's how they're loosely linked as kind of a trilogy. It's not a trilogy in the sense that, you know, there's a band called Rhapsody on Fire, and they've got two sets of albums called Symphony of Enchanted Lands. You've got part one is one album, part two is another, and they tell uh they're both concept albums telling the same story. One's part one, one's the follow-up, the sequel, part two. And likewise with the band Halloween, they've got Keeper of the Seven Keys Part One, and then a follow-up album, Keeper of the Seven Keys Part Two. They are the duologies rather than trilogies. There's only two of them rather than three. However, the plot, there's a story there being told through the songs from start to finish, and one's a sequel to the other where the story carries on and is a clear narrative, a clear plot between them. We don't get that here. It's more the subject matter and the concepts being discussed, the scientific concepts about science, about human beings, evolution, and nature in general, that are all being discussed on these albums, and that's how they are loosely classed as a trilogy of albums. Now, there is no uh tour to support Yesterwind. Uh, the band released a statement in April of 2023, so a little bit before Yesterwind came out to advise they would be taking a hiatus from touring for two to three years uh following the album release. And Troy Donically, the Piper occasional guitarist in the band and vocalist now, uh, he advised the reason for the hiatus was personal reasons and basically to avoid burnout. And during the hiatus, Tuomos and Troy toured with their side project alongside Tuomos' wife uh with the band Ory, which we've discussed in the last two previous episodes. It's uh more of a folk uh acoustic sound, which is more akin to what Tuomos' initial vision for Nightwish was. Uh the band is named after a character from the King Killer Chronicle books by Patrick Rothbus. So again, is Tuomos leaning into that storytelling narrative that he loves? And obviously, his wife is the singer in this one. She's got a much softer voice, different style to Flor Jansen or Totalia, and he got Tuomos and Troy there as well. It's a good little band if you like that style of music. If you're only in it for the metal, then it's probably not for you. But they did touring a little bit during this hiatus. The album title, Yesterwind, uh, what does it mean? What is it about? Well, uh, according to the band, it was a word coined by Troy Donacly, and two amos described, I quote, it encapsulates the feelings of time, history, memory, and the connection to past generations who have all had their lives, their ups and downs, and they don't exist anymore except as atoms scattered all over the universe. And we're going to be in that state pretty soon as well. So that should give you something to think about. Quote there from Toomos uh in terms of what Yesterwind means, and generally it was just a phrase coined by Troydonically, the fellow Nightwish band member. Now, Yesterwind came out in that era of streaming services, so in terms of commercial success, other than just seeing total streams online on Apple Music or Spotify, it's hard to kind of gauge the success of the album, especially when a lot of those streams might be on YouTube, for example, with the music videos or with uh someone just randomly uploading the album, kind of like piracy, where the band don't get the streams then, but this guy who or lady who has illegally uploaded the version of the album onto YouTube, they get the streams instead, and it's probably demonetized, etc. It's a murky world, is what I'm getting at now, trying to gauge the success of an album. There are still some physical releases. I mean, vinyls kind of like a booming underground industry at the moment, especially in the rock and metal worlds. They tend to be the audience that are kind of buying vinyls because they still appreciate that physical media to go along with their love of music. It's nice having all these songs and albums at a touch of your finger on your mobile phone or your other whatever device you're listening on, but there's nothing quite like supporting the band and having the physical media and the artwork to go with it, and being able to put the music on and kind of put your devices away, your phones away, with get rid of the distractions and just listen to the music like I guess I personally used to do when I first started getting into music as a teenager. I put the CD player on in my bedroom, lights are off, lying down, closing my eyes, and just listening to the music. Sounds quite cringy maybe, but that's just personally how I used to listen to music rather than some other people might put the music on as loud as they can and just be dancing, for example, in their bedroom. Everyone's different. But the point is you weren't distracted while listening to music back then. You were listening to the music and only to the music. You weren't also playing some free app on your phone or going through social media, the distractions were put away. And there are people out there, the vinyl listeners, who do still like to have that experience. So there are still some physical sales of these albums, it's just still hard to judge the success commercially of them. But this album did reach number one in Finland, as older albums pretty much did for Nightwish. And it was top ten in multiple European countries. It reached number 20 in the UK album charts and number one on the UK rock and metal charts. And the very first single, the promotional single from Yesterwine came out in May of 2024, so a good few months before the album release, which is typical of today's day and age. You tend to get a song dropped on the streaming services alongside a music video on YouTube, and that's also now viewable on the streaming services, not just audio platforms anymore. They do have video capabilities, especially like Spotify. And the music videos these days, I think Nightwish put more effort in than most for this first promotional single. A lot of the times they're just random 10-second clips on complete repeat, or they're just the lyrics written down in front of you, which anyone could do on Microsoft PowerPoint, for example. Little to no effort gone into it, but as long as it's up on YouTube, it's accessible, and people can go discover it and we can share it with the algorithms, etc. But now Nightwish did put more effort in with these music videos. And the first, as I said, released in May 2024, was a song called Perfume of the Timeless. What is that song about? Well, the song refers to the enduring legacy and connection of humanity through an unbroken chain of ancestors, representing the idea that our existence carries the scent or echo of millions of past lives, love stories and experiences, making us part of something eternal beyond our individual lives. I feel like that's one of those topics that, depending on who you are as a person and how deeply you think about uh philosophical uh theories and ideas, that this will either be a really deep topic for you, or it'll be a really surface-level topic for you that you'll just glance over. I mean, if you think about like all your ancestors, your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, your great-great-grandparents, etc. etc. Um, how far back that goes is quite hard to get your mind around sometimes. But also all the little things that would have to have happened to make sure those chain of events are all linked up so you could be born, you know? If my parents hadn't met in two rival pubs in uh a local town, I would never have been born. You know, if you think really deep about it, you know, the night I was conceived, if my parents had decided, oh, you know, I'm too tired tonight, let's let's try tomorrow instead. I wouldn't be born. Even if they had just waited a few hours, I might not have been born. If they'd done it a little bit earlier, I might not have been born. Even when they did it, when they did it, you know, if my sperm hadn't beat the millions of other ones, if someone else had just pipped me to the post with that egg, I wouldn't be born. And you think how far back this goes. This is I'm just talking about my parents, but it goes back to their parents' parents, and their parents are parents, and now we are sprouting like an upside-down Christmas tree. You know, you start at the bottom, but now I've got my dad's parents and my mum's parents, and you got my mum's mum's parents, my mum's dad's parents, my dad's you get the idea. It goes all the way back and just widens in scope, and so many of these events have had to happen so you and me could be born. And what are we doing with our lives? Well, I'm making a podcast and you're listening to it. I like to think it's a good time. I'll let you judge if that's correct or not. But you see how deeply you can think about these things and how far into the rabbit hole you can go. Oh, you can just go, meh, I was born, that was that. And then I said, really surface-level thoughts. I just found that interesting in terms of this subject matter, and it goes all through the previous album and the album before that, Endless Forms Most Beautiful. This subject matter is discussed as an the longest-ever song, the epic, that's on Endless Forms Most Beautiful, called the Greatest Show on Earth, the one they like to close their shows out these days. That song is all about that topic of evolution and how we were born and how lucky uh we are born and how much how many times we've won the lottery over and over and again just to be born. Um, it's a crazy concept to think about. This song, as well, Perfume of the Timeless, is the first promotional single from Yesterwind, but you can tell the difference in eras now and the fact that the first promotional single for Yesterwind uh is eight minutes and twelve seconds in length. It's the longest, well, second longest song on Yesterwind. There is one that just pips it by a minute. You could never have done that uh just 10-15 years prior and before. You look back to some of the quotes Tua Moss has had on prior albums when he's talking about choosing the promotional single, whether it be Nima, whether it be Amaranth. Tuomoss was looking for a commercial hit that could be played on the radio so more ears could hear Nightwish than had heard them before, and then you can maybe buy the album and get into the more longer, progressive tracks and Nightwish are probably more akin to on their albums. You can discover a ghost love score, you can discover a poet and the pendulum. But those songs could never be released as a promotional single, despite maybe being the best songs on the album, if that's your opinion. They couldn't be released because the radio would never play them because they would take up too much airtime. They believed songs had to be three to five minutes maximum in length. I remember there was uh a great difficulty with Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody at one point being able to be played on the radio due to the track length. And look how legendary that song is. I mean, today you asked a rock station or a classic music station to play Bohemian Rhapsody, they all do it no problem at all. But back in the late 70s, it hadn't had that legendary vibe, that aura about that song yet, so you couldn't really it was more of an argument. Luckily, Queen are a massive band, and obviously they won out, and then Wayneswell, the movie, came out and just gave Bohemian Rhapsody the song a whole new lease of life over 10 15 years later. Most bands aren't Queen and don't have that luxury and don't have a movie giving it a huge new fan base years and years ago. Later. So Nightwish had to choose songs like Nemo and like Amaranth that were more standard in their song structure, you know, verse chorus, verse chorus, final chorus, and they were more radio friendly and more accessible, more likely to get airtime. We're not in that world anymore, we're in the streaming world now where everything's built around social media, YouTube, algorithms, trying to hit people in that way, and therefore you can now have an eight-minute song because a lot of the time the clips being shared on social media may only be 10-20 seconds long. It gives you a small snippet of the song, and then it'll be a link to try and click you into the full version. So you can hook people a lot quicker. And people, to be honest, don't have the attention span these days to even give a song four or five minutes on first listen. Very often now people are listening just for 20-30 seconds and then they've made their judgment call and they've moved on. You've got a really long intro these days, that's very ambient and not really doing a lot in that before the song kicks in. People may never actually hear the song kick in. You gotta think about that these days with these promotional singles. But at any age of social media, you can the snippet you share could be right in the middle of the song where the chorus is or where the hook is. So you've got more things to play with. And as a result, Nightwish were able to release a promotional single. That's the second longer song on the album, and more progressive and akin to maybe what the majority of Nightwish is. When we wrap up this episode, I'm gonna talk about the legacy of Nightwish and how I feel they're still underappreciated and undervalued to a degree in certain countries. And I think it touches upon this topic because a lot of people think that Nightwish are all about songs like Nemo, and I don't think it could be further from the truth. If you listen to even the album that Nemo was on once, there's a lot of songs that are very, very different to Nemo. Anyway, let's get back onto Yes to Wind. And the second promotional single from Yes to Wind came out again another month before the album did. It came out in August of 2024, and this song is called The Day of the City. Well, another quote from Tua Moss coming, and here is a quote The song is about fear and controlling people with fear, and that's what leaders, religious leaders, political leaders, have done for millennia, and today, especially media, it's something that rubs me the wrong way every single day. Because even though the world is still filled with problems that we need to address, there are some terrible goings on. We are being fed this nonsense constantly about you have to be afraid of the end of the world, and we are living in the worst times ever. The world is coming to an end, Y2K, the end of the Mayan calendars. How many times have we been predicted the end of the world and it's never happening? So the song has a very optimistic positive message under it that even though there is so much going on that we need to address in this world, don't forget that you are extremely lucky to be alive. You have a few decades in the sun to live your life. So make the best out of it and try not to fear all. Quote from two of us there on the meaning of the day of. Now, before we go to the third and final promotional single, I played a couple of clips now from Yes to Wine. I'm gonna play a lot more on the rest of this episode. But I mentioned in the previous two episodes uh Flor Jansen, and I'll mention it again because I think it's the most prominent on this album, unfortunately. Flor Jansen, as I've said, is the best Nightwish singer. She's phenomenal, she's pop in the argument and possibly theirs, number one female metal vocalist of all time. She can do it all! She can do the classically trained operatic vocals like Tadia, she can do the traditional rock metal vocals, rock pop like Annette, and she can do her own thing as well. She can do the musical theater, the whimsical, the fairy tale, she can do vocal fry, she can power it, she can be more mellow and soft in tone, she can cover so many ranges and different singing styles. I don't think it's a thing she can't do. She is immensely talented and easily, as I said, the best of the three singers Nightwish has had. And when she's singing live, it's fantastic. All of that shows through. However, on the studio recordings, as I said on Endless Forms Most Beautiful, I feel like she is uh underproduced. I feel like she's asked to tone it back, to suit the song, not yourself. And at times I want her to belt out her vocals. I want her to show her true range, her true power. And she's kind of holding back sometimes. And I gave examples of that on Endless Forms Most Beautiful. On human nature, I think she's at her best. And I think I even gave examples, for example, in the song Tribal, where I feel like was hearing the Flor Janssen I want to hear on the studio records. On this album, Yesterwind, she has some shining moments, for example, in the song Lantern Light, which I won't cover today. Spoiler, it's not a hidden gem for me, although it is very popular online. So if you want to hear a soft ballad, that's very unmetal, unrock, if that's a term. Uh it's definitely not rock or metal. It's the softest ballad I think. Well, certainly Flo Jansen's ever done with Nightwish. And it is popular online, so if you want to, and it's popular amongst Nightwish fans too. So if you're interested, go let's check out Lantern Light. It's the final track on this album. So she has some shining lights in this album, but generally, she's so quiet in the mix. And you can hear it in the two clips I've given you there, the two promotional singles, Perfume of the Timeless and The Day of. I think she should be louder, and it's not shouted about as much on Endless Form as Most Beautiful and Human Nature, those two albums. But on Yesterwind, it very much is shouted about. I think the day it dropped, all the Nightwish uh forum social media, they were all shouting at how Floor needs to be louder in the mix. And this isn't a knock on Floor Jansen. Uh Flor Janssen's singing her part, she's doing as she's told. She's not the songwriter, such as Tuomos. She's not the producer in the studio, she's not the one mixing the album. Uh she's just performing, and I think even in the case of Yesterwine, I believe she performed separately in her own home remotely due to uh family commitments. I think she might have been having a young child or maybe pregnant with another child at the time. I can't remember, but I've seen the documentary on the making of Yesterwine, and she is doing it all remotely and just following instructions and singing multiple takes. But yeah, when it comes to the mix and she's so quiet in the mix, the orchestra and the guitars are drowning her out a lot of the time. And a lot of the time I can hear the melody she's singing, but I can't make out the words because she's so quiet. So I wish she was louder in the mix. And I mention it now to you as when we're playing the future clips from Yester Wind, the other songs, you can maybe pick it out for yourself as well and pick up on it if you haven't done already. Now let's go to the third promotional single. Uh it's what's called An Ocean of Strange Islands. It came out the same month as the album, so it dropped along the same time in September of 2024. And the song describes life's journey as a solitary voyage across a mystical ocean, where each strange island represents significant life experiences, past mistakes, fleeting encounters, or lost relationships that shape the narrator's path towards a final destination or purpose. Uh let's listen to is track two in the album, but the third promotional single, An Ocean of Strange Islands. At nine minutes and twenty-six seconds. So I thought I'd play a little bit of a longer clip because it's quite progressive and it changes throughout. Now, we move on to our first near hidden gem. So, in terms of the hidden gems on Yesterwind, uh, due to the age of the album, not having a chance to bed in these songs that weren't commercially promoted, and therefore the number of streams on those non-promoted songs are all roughly uh around the same point. There's not much between them. I think the lowest uh stream track is at 1,200,000, the highest is two million three hundred thousand. You know, there's quite it's less than a million between them, which isn't a lot. So what I'm trying to say is, other than the three promotional singles, I got my pick of the rest of the album for what my hidden gems are. So basically, I'm just gonna pick the two best songs that aren't promotional singles from Yesterwind. Now, the first one I'm gonna play a really quick clip from you. Didn't quite make it as a hidden gem, um, but I want but it was close, right? It nearly made it. So I'm gonna consider this an honorable mention, like I have done sometimes in the past, and just restrict myself to two hidden gems on Yesterwind. I don't think the album is whether it's because of the songwriting or the mixing with floor, uh, I think it is held back a little bit compared to the previous Run of Nightwish albums, which are all pretty fantastic. Uh, it's a slight notch below fantastic for me. So it doesn't deserve to have three hidden gems, no offense to Yesterwind. So we're gonna restrict ourselves to two. So this is just an honorable mention, and this song is a quick clip from track number six, and it's called Sway. Perfect day.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

Sway over the discontent. Cold stories in a tent. Your house lands on the winch. See yourself. It has begun to snow again in this perfect feel of age.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Oh the birds are flown. That was Sway, and it's a very, very soft song. It does get a little bit more in terms of the build-up a little bit later on, but not by much. It's a very much an acoustic folk-like ballad, and it's sung by both uh Troy Donicly and Flo Jansen. Troy's probably taking the lead in that one over Flo as well. Floor's doing more of a harmonizing backing vocal for me over Troy. Troy's definitely louder in the mix. I've said it before in some other songs. I think that song Sway is more akin to Tumas' initial vision for Nightwish until he heard how powerful Talia had developed her voice into operatic style, and then understanding that to suit that vocal style, Nightwish's music had to be louder and more dramatic and epic. And that's where he went with Nightwish. And Sway, for me, is more akin to the initial campfire acoustic folk vision he had. Now we're gonna move on to our first hidden gem. Uh, this hidden gem doesn't have any clear meaning behind the lyrics, but we will talk to what some fan theories are about in terms of the meaning of the song. But for now, just enjoy the quick clip I'm gonna show you before we start talking about the song. And this song is track number nine, and it's called Spider Silk. A very soft piano intro there. And I get a lot of kind of the softer acoustic side of Opeth in that uh in that intro. The song goes very different to what you'd expect from Opeth, but with that soft, almost eerie, creepy like piano melody, and then a soft guitar over the top, playing these long-held chords and notes. Uh, I get the Opeth vibe, and I love Opeth, so I'm all for it. But it gives you, it sets you in this mood of ooh, this is quite soft. I need to think, I need to listen here, but it's a bit of something creepy going on. There's something gonna turn around the corners that I that will be unexpected, something I don't think will happen is about to happen. Floor comes in with the soft vocals. I'm gonna go back about 10 seconds for the next clip because I want you to listen to how the song actually kicks in it. I cut it right before it did deliberately, because I love how it kicks in. I love the way Floor's delivery uh just immediately turns and goes darker, and then bam! the drums, guitars, distortion, bass, everything else kicks in with it. I'll play that for you now.

SPEAKER_03 37:50

Why did you wave during the moonlight hours? Did you create how did you wait and try the other flight? Suckin' and dry.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Sucking him dry, and then everything else kicks in, the song kicks in. It's a very bass-heavy this uh verse. All you can really hear is both the bass guitar, the drums, and the string orchestra uh playing very deep notes alongside the bass guitar, just playing the rhythm, really, and floor singing over the top. And in this verse, floor sounds good in the mix. This is when floor is mixed well with the other instruments. When the chorus kicks in, which I played a little bit of then for you, and the guitars and everything kick in, and the rest of the orchestra, then she gets lost a little bit more. You can still just about hear her, but I wish she was a bit louder in that chorus. But what is this song about? Well, let's talk about some of the fan theories, obviously. The first couple of lyrics is using the analogy of a spider and eating a fly in its web, but does it wait for it or does it does it hunt the fly, etc.? So what is this about? Well, some fan theories think this an this is an old humans' capability of creating art and the spider web being an act of survival, but also a work of perseverance and beauty. Uh some others think that the spider silk is used as a metaphor for life's intricate tapestry, destiny, and the creation of narratives. I think the latter one plays more into what the uh themes of this album and the two prior, this little concept trilogy, uh goes along more with that science, human nature, evolution, etc. for me. Um it's very much up to you though. There is no definitive uh meaning for this song. Tuomos has never come out and said what the song is about deliberately, because he never does. He likes people to have their own interpretations and he makes uh his lyrics use things like metaphors and ambiguity, abstraction to make it so that you can have your own meanings for each of these songs and make them more personal for you.

SPEAKER_02 40:30

Okay, let's get back into spider silk spider silk and someone splash shells for stuff and spin and away.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

But I want to pull it all the way back to the start of that last clip where verse 2 comes in because I love this kind of backing vocal of Floor Janssen is doing. Uh, she's singing over the top of it, so it's obviously layered in there more as like a backing instrument than another vocal line. Uh, but I'll play it for you now. You can hear it originally at the start, and then it carries on even when the rest of the instruments and floor comes in with the proper lyrics and vocal melody. Listen out for this little snippet. Did you hear it then? It's like a ha-ha. It's very soft in the mix, but it adds to that eeriness, that creepiness that comes with the subject matter of spiders anyway, right? It's a perfect analogy to use if you're talking about if you want to create that aura, that atmosphere of just creepiness overall. So many people are scared of spiders. Even if you're not scared of spiders, many people still think they look creepy with the eight legs, etc. Very there's a minority of people that love spiders and think they're cute or whatever. They do exist, they have them as pets, but generally the majority are ever scared of them, or at least uh admit that they're a little bit creepy. So you got all that coming anyway with the spider subject matter. But when she's floor's doing this, it gives this ghost eeriness in the background that is almost uh subliminal in its messaging. It's not something you're gonna pick out in the mix automatically, it's not something that their ears are gonna be tuned to listen out for. You're gonna be more focused on the rhythm or the words and the melody that floor's singing generally. But this is still going on in the background, and your mind is still subconsciously taking this in and adding to that atmosphere, adding to that storytelling that Tua Moss loves to do so much. Okay, let's get back into where we left off in the second clip back to Spider Silk. Spin away, the delicate silver silk of the hallway. So we come to the breakdown, like the interlude section here of Spider Silk, and I love what the strings are doing. I'm sure it's two or more song keyboards with string synthesizers, although in the recording it's probably the London Philharmonic Orchestra that they've been working with for all their studio albums since Century Child, all the way back then. But I love the scales they're playing, and I'm gonna play you a quick short clip to kind of emphasize what I mean. So I love that little run, that ascending, descending scales that Tuomos is playing there. It's very akin to classical music. I love classical music, and I think it blends so well with metal classical, and let's be honest, that's what symphonic metal is. It's that mixture of the orchestra with the metal, and yeah, Nightwish do it very well. And I really love what Tuomos does with it here in Spider Silk, and then he got Flo kind of empathizing with a ha ha ha ha just to kind of like add that explanation point on the end of the run there. And in the rest of that breakdown section as well, you do again with the strings, they're doing a secato like kind of notes, which I talked about in previous episodes and how that can very much drive tension and anguish and anxiety in music. And I think there's no better example than the theme from Psycho, the Alfred Hitchcock movie. There's even examples of it in the theme from the Steven Spielberg movie, Jaws. Maybe not the early bit where it's just to do in the two notes, but the bit after that is very staccato. They're not long-held notes, it's very stop starty staccato type notes, and adds eerie and tension, anxiety. And they're doing a little bit of that here in spider silk here as well. Not as obvious. Again, it's more subliminal in its delivery, but it is there with the strings kind of giving that storytelling vibe and an atmosphere. That they also did with the subject matter, with the spiders, you know, sucking the fly dry, you know, hunting its prey, consuming its prey, and just spiders in general with arachnophobia everywhere. You know, they're obviously going for that anxiety, tension, creepy aura atmosphere around the song without going too dark at the same time. Still trying to keep a little bit of positivity. That's all through this album, as per Tuomos' quote earlier. Okay, let's get back to Spider Silk. You had the final chorus, and then it goes into this completely different outro that's more akin to the intro. It starts off kind of this creepy piano sound, but then it seamlessly transitions into this beautiful piano sound. And I think there's storytelling going on there, right? That's deliberate. So we started off the song with all its creepiness, it's eeriness. We end the song with this beauty, and I think it's telling the story of how even with death in nature, there's still beauty behind it. In this case, it's the masterpiece of the spider's web. I'm gonna give you some of the lyrics from the chorus. So spin away the delicate silver silk of your web on your masterpiece. Cut the thread once you're done with the newly dead and weave a new one. So it's kind of symbolizing how you know it's calling the spider's web a masterpiece, you know, in construction, in architecture, and how it's designed, how the spider just does it by instinct as well when it's born and knows how to spin up these webs, but also how it can keep spinning up these webs. You know, I've caught the fly in this web, you know, as it says with the line done with the newly dead. You know, I've eaten it, I've consumed this fly, I now need to make a new web. I need now need to catch more flies, and I'll perfect my masterpiece again, and I'll do it again and again and again throughout my lifetime. It's a cyclical nature, and something that's been a theme in both, I guess in this album, but human nature prior to it as well, is the cyclical nature of human beings. How you know I looked at we covered the song Tribal in the previous episode, and how we probably aren't that much different to the original cavemen, the apes we evolved from. They walked around in tribes, and we tended to do it as well, whether it's a tribal sports team, our country, our town, our family, whatever it is, we tend to still go around in tribes. It's the cyclical nature of human beings and it's a subject matter that Tuomos loves to philosophize on and write songs about. I think he's doing it this year again, using the spider and the spider's web as like the metaphor. And remember, he's calling the spider's web a masterpiece here as well. And I think that's where the beauty of death comes in. Yes, death is horrible, but it's cyclical, and there's a beauty to it too, in terms of from the spider's point of view rather than the flies. Anyway, that was my first hidden gem on Yesterwind, the song Spider Silk, and now we're gonna move on to our second and final hidden gem, not just on Yesterwind, but on a whole Nightwish series. And this one is track number three on Yesterwind, and there's a part of me that maybe thinks I should have picked something else just because of the track name and how I'm probably gonna either butcher the pronunciation or get tongue-tied quite a bit as I say it repeatedly throughout the rest of this episode. And this is track three, my second hidden gem from Yesterwind is called the Antikythera mechanism. So the song kicks in and it's quite bassy in kind of its root note there as well. But then Flo comes in belting with this first line in the verse, the weave. And it's giving me Mediterranean vibes in the melody, and there's a reason for that, and I'll just talk about the subject matter and what is an anti-fera mechanism. Well, we'll we'll go there next. But I really like how she comes in there. I just wish she was a bit louder in the mix again, although this time at least I can hear her in the in the verse. Uh, and we'll get to the chorus and we'll judge whether we can hear Flor Janssen in the mix in the chorus or not. We've got the pre-chorus there with Troy Donically as well. And one thing I wanted to bring up, uh, that's something that's different about Yesterwind to the previous, say, five albums, is obviously with that departure of Marco uh and his vocal ability, his male vocal ability, how high and low and raspy his voice is. For me personally, it's noticeable on Yes to Wind how Tuomos, the composer, the songwriter, has kind of lost that tool to his tool belt. He's lost that string to his bibbow. What he's got instead, he's pivoted to Troy Donacly, who's already in the band. He sung in other projects prior. But his voice is a lot softer toned and more folk-like than Marco's. So he's kind of pivoted rather than getting these aggressive verses and choruses with uh Marco, instead we get these softer toned male parts with Troy. And a personal preference, which one which one you prefer. But I feel like Marco could have done both as well, and we're Troy in the band anyway. With Marco, you could have always used Troy, and they did in the past, especially on the album Human Nature. And I yeah, I just wish we still had Marco and Tulomos had that string still to his bow. When it comes to his songwriting, I wonder how different Gesterwine would have been if Marco was still in the band. I think it's uh underrated how much of a loss he is tonight, which and how much of a gain he was when he first joined the band on an album Century Child. All those years ago in the early 2000s. Okay, now I said I'd tell you what the Antikythera mechanism actually is. This song is basically a history lesson. There's no philosophy going on here. The Antikythera mechanism is basically a complex ancient Greek bronze device. Uh, it was essentially the world's first known analog computer, which was used to predict astronomical positions, eclipses, and even athletic cycles with things like the Olympics, which obviously started in ancient Greece and uh to this day runs every four years, with that period being called the Olympiad. Things you learn. The mechanism itself, this Greek bronze device, the Antikythera mechanism, it was dated around the first century BC, and it was found in a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901, which is why it has the name that it does. Let's get back into the song and listen to that chorus for the Antikythera mechanism. So this song is one of the heaviest songs on Yesterwind, and the chorus is very catchy, in my opinion. Flor Jansen, she is belting it out uh physically in the recording studio, but I still think she's too low in the mix. Like I can hear her, you can hear what she's doing, but it's sometimes hard to make out the words. It's like you've got a TV on and the sound's a bit too low because of background noise, you just can't quite pick out uh the odd word. You can hear maybe every two to th two out of four, three out of four words that they're saying, and it makes you strain your ears sometimes, if that's what you want to listen to with the lyrics in this case. The lyrics for the chorus are humankind reconciled, human child undefiled, navigate, celebrate, history, mystery, afterlife will arrive. Outermost reaches of human mind, labyrinth, navigate, animate, avatar of the tides in the end to the stars. So there's a lot of words really there than sentences rather than lines, you know, and it's delivered in the same way. It's like humankind reconciled, human child, and a file! You know, it's very much chanted almost at you, but it's very catchy in its way, and this song is more dramatic and epic than Nightwish standard at DNA compared to some of the other songs on Yesterwind, and you've got this post-chorus then as well, which sounds really cool. And it ends with that line, Dare's dare, which is a song again quite chanted and aggressive by Flor Janis, Yeah! Yeah! You know, it's not just going there as there or anything like that. It just shouted at you, makes you listen, makes you hear, and I love that about this song. Let's get back into it, the Antikythera mechanism. Actually, before we get back into the music, quick mention about how that second verse kicks back in with just Flo belting out that note, and then all the other instruments following immediately after with uh Brave Old World. It's only on a brave old world, everything else kicks in. A quick listen to that short clip, and then we'll get back into the main song. Yeah, to me that sounds cool, and it makes you take notice of Flo's voice before the verse properly kicks in, so your ears attuned to what she's singing and the melody she's singing and the words she's saying. But also it's these little details that I always say adds gives these songs the magic dust that it needs. This is what separates the best bands from the average bands. It's these little nuances that just makes it sound different, makes it sound more unique, and makes your ears prick up and take notice. It makes a song sound less generic.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:35

Anyway, back to the main next clip for the Antikythera mechanism, and we'll be able to get the money.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:53

This hour is ours, dare us dare. And I just like the melody and like the tone shift between the main chorus and the post-chorus. It gives it that dramatic edge, that movie score feel and vibe for me, and it brings that Mediterranean Greek style melody from Flor Jansen. I just really like that post-chorus, wanted to call it out before we now go into the instrumental break. Let's listen to that. Because there's a lot to take in. Uh, one of the thir first things I spotted in that instrumental breakdown was the is the sound of like a mechanism in the background, obviously representing in this case the Antikythera mechanism, but it sounded like cogs going on in the background. Let me see if I can pick it out for you. Could you make it out there? It's very, very subtle, and you have to be listening out for it really to hear it in the mix. But on top of that as well, there's like a machinery uh sound that's going on, like you can hear that in the mix as well if you go listening for it, and that amongst with what I would consider like the gear mechanism kind of sound effect. You do get this vibe of the mechanism, you know? Um that's which is what a song's all about. And then it goes into this really cool guitar effect. It's not doing anything complicated, but it's quite and it's even quite repetitive in how it's delivered, but it's so catchy and it gets you head banging after everything that's come before it, and with all the textures and the different layers, it sounds really cool. It's very simple. It's just two notes. It starts on the first note, goes up to the second, and then back down to the first. It was da da da. That's literally all it's doing. Anyone could probably play that on guitar, even if you're an absolute novice beginner. But with everything going on in the studio and the recording and the mix and the way your song has led you to this point as well, with everything else going on, it all puts you in that frame of mind where for me it gets me head banging and it sounds cool, and it drives the rest of the instrumental break. Let's play a little clip of when that's. Guitar bit first comes in. And after a little bit, after this guitar section has had a chance to take over and take over that rhythm of the section, uh, you then get these quiet chants, these female quiet chants in the background, and then you get these words from a male voice which I'm sure is Troy, where it says, From Lucy's prints to those on the moon, and from the moon to the dot dot dot. It leaves it there, so you don't quite know what the last couple of words of that line would have been. But let's listen to this section now because it gets more dramatic, more movie score epicness that you usually get from a nightwish song. It sounds a little creepy, but that's again going back to staccato I talked about earlier. The choir is doing that. She's going ha. You know, it's just hitting you with those short, snappy notes, and then the male voice over the top, just saying these words. It's not even singing them, it's just saying the words from Lucy's Prince to those on the moon and from the moon to the it's just saying it in quite a creepy way. I like that atmosphere, I like the vibes it gives me off this song and the escapism I get when I just close my eyes and I go into a new world thanks to the music from Nightwish and the song, the Antikythera mechanism. And then right after that, right where I stopped it, Kaihato starts having his drum section. He's playing all over the toms, and he just takes this section up another notch in terms of tempo and just generally the feel of the section. Let's listen to that. And he's not just playing, he's not just doing that like you're getting a lot of metal, he's doing it like in little rhythms, like and it's it's quite hard to do as a drummer to be playing those awkward rhythms and that tight to the rest of the band as well. And let's be honest, all the band members of Nightwish are phenomenal musicians, whatever instrument they play, and you have to be to be playing this tight and to be playing this kind of music, especially in a live setting, like they do. So, right after the section, then everything kind of fades away a little bit, and we get this guitar melody, and it's basically leading you back into the chorus, it's playing that melody of the chorus. We'll play that and then we'll play it till the end of the song with the final chorus and the outro. Let's listen to the rest and the ending and the crescendo and the finale of the Antikythera mechanism. The album, but also on our Night Wish series. What a journey it has been! Nine episodes in total, all at least over an hour in length, sometimes closer to two hours. We've got at least 15 to 16 hours worth of content. I hope you've enjoyed the journey if you've been with us for the whole time. If this is your first time, then please go back and listen to the other episodes. If you enjoyed this, you'll enjoy them as well. Now, Nightwish as a band, where do I see them? What's my conclusion of Nightwish? Well, for starters, they're one of my favorite bands. The band I would most like to see live that I haven't already seen live. Had a chance, as we talked about in a previous episode, had tickets bought, but then the COVID-19 pandemic happened and the gig got cancelled, unfortunately, and now they've taken a hiatus from touring live. So I do hope I get a chance to see them live again. And to be honest, I'd love it if Marco was back in the band for that. If they did an anniversary something where they brought in Talia and Annette as well and Yucca back into the fold, that would be awesome. I know there's been rumors of that, but I think those rumors have since been shot down as not possible. There was talks about it for like a 30th anniversary special, but it doesn't look like that's going to be happening. But I would love it if it did. Now, in the realms of metal and music in general, what are my thoughts on Nightwish in terms of their influence in music in general? Well, I think if you go especially to Finland, their home country, of course, uh, they get all the credit and adulation they deserve. Uh, in nearby countries like Sweden, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, I think they also get the credit there as well. However, in the United States, in the United Kingdom where I'm from, uh, in some of the major countries in the world, the most powerful countries in the world, I think they should be recognized far more for the influence they've had in music and for how good musicians they are and how good songwriters they are. I think there's a lot of people that would love Nightwish that have never heard Nightwish. And I think the evidence of that is with some of the YouTube reactors that react to genres of music like metal that they're not initially fans of, like you get rap and hip-hop fans listening to it. And they're usually doing it to get viewers to be controversial because they don't like the songs, or they get met they get the audience to dictate what song they listen to next, and they try to make it controversial, and that's the hook of the YouTube video, for example, trying to get Christians to react to the song Disciple by Slayer, for example. That's usually the hook. But whenever one of those YouTubers ends up listening to Nightwish, they always love it, whether they're a fan of rap and hip-hop or pop or classical music or jazz or just fans of vocal ability in general, musical theatre, wherever their background is, they always end up loving uh Nightwish, and especially they fall in love with Floor Jansen. And I think if they even knew the background of some of these songs with the background of two amosters, like the meaning of, for example, The Poet and the Pendulum. A lot of people react to live version with Floor singing The Poet and the Pendulum and Ghost Love Score. And they don't really know the meaning behind the song and the story of the band. And I think that they did, they'd love it even more than they already do and first listen. I think Nightwish as a metal band, a symphonic metal band, is so accessible to so many people and such a gateway into this community that not enough people have listened to them. The songs that they might have listened to aren't really like the good songs, like Nemo, for example. That would be the promotional music video that I think was pushed the most. Maybe that and Amaranth, and the Spotify stream suggests that Amaranth is the more popular of the two. However, neither of those have Flo Jansen singing, and Tadia is a very different singer to Annette and Floor. So you're getting different vibes of Nightwish then. And Nightwish really took a boom, as I've mentioned, when Evanescence kind of broke through with uh Bring Me to Life, which went to number one in the UK. That's how big that song was, you know, a metal song, a new metal song. I know people who challenge it being metal, class as new metal in my head. Uh a new metal song getting to number one in the UK singles chart is incredible. And there's a lot of female-fronted metal bands then that kind of got pushed to the forefront, whether it's a bit more extreme, like Arch Enemy or something a bit more on the same spectrum as Evanescence, like within temptation. They got pushed to the forefront at this point, even though they're already established bands. Nightwish was another one of them, and then Nemo was probably the next music video promoted after that. But a lot of people just assumed this is the next female fronted band, this is the next band that's just trying to be another Evanescence. And if you didn't like Evanescence, then they're not gonna then listen to Nightwish. And if you're one of those people that listen to Evanescence and you're probably coming more from like the commercial pop world, you probably didn't take Tatalia's operatic vocals. It probably wasn't an easy transition for you. Something like Within Temptation would have been a much easier transition for you, maybe even Lacuna Coyle. So I think that was the moment they had to grasp a bigger audience and they weren't able to do it for things outside their control. I mean, Nightwish were releasing albums before Evanescence was formed, you know? Uh they just happened to ride the coattails a little bit at that point in time. And I feel like Nightwish really found their stride when Marco joined the band, and then when they kind of went a little bit more commercial when Annette joined the band and they had a different style of singing that they now had to write songs for. And I think that made them more commercially viable. Uh and they I think the songwriting just got better and better from that point on. I think Century Child was the first really good album. Once was when they took it to another level with the songwriting, and then from Dark Passion Play onwards, Imaginarium, Endless Form is the most beautiful, and onwards, the songwriting just got more and more mature. And sometimes that can go against a band. How many bands can you think of that had the heyday, say 20 years ago, where they were releasing their earlier stuff and they got all their fan base, and then 10 years later they're still releasing albums, but they're nowhere near uh selling as many. And some people will even be surprised that they're still making and selling records. I mean, you look at Bon Jovi, massive rock megastars, right? Uh they got the Heyday in the 80s when they're doing Living on a Prayer, and before that, Runaway, you know, Slippery When Wet. That album made a megastars. And they had a brief resurgence in the late 90s when they did things like It's My Life. However, they've been releasing albums since then. No one really takes any notice of it. And those albums are probably way more mature in terms of the songwriting than anything they did in the 80s, which would be a lot more immature and more hem rock, you know, arena rock-esque. But no one's listening to it. So sometimes the maturity can go against you as an artist, as a band. I think in Nightwish's case, it just made them go bigger, bigger in epicness in scope. With the way Nightwish music is made up with the symphonic metalness and the orchestra, them going more mature isn't just a subject matter change, which they did do. Isn't just a case of maybe doing more emotional chords and trying to tone it back a bit. It's a case of we'll bring in more orchestra, we'll bring in more epicness here, more tension here. I'll learn kind of from classical music and movie scores what makes things give it this atmosphere over this other atmosphere over here. How can I then use that in my music? I think Tuomos does a lot of reading, a lot of research, not just in subject matters like the Richard Dawkins and evolution, but also in terms of just uh his musical scope as well. He's well versed in like the you know the theory of classical music, he's like a music professor in that sense. So he can utilize all these things he's learning from elsewhere into the Nightwish music and also just expand his ability and talent. And you've heard that on the Nightwish journey. I mean, let's listen to something from Angel's Falls first, the very first album. Listen to how I guess immature and power metal this is. Compare that to, for example, the intro and how much more mature this sound from their longest song ever off the endless film's most beautiful album, The Greatest Show on Earth. The orchestra comes in little by little. Our song's 24 minutes long and one second, so I'm not gonna play anything more than that at this section of the podcast. But you get the idea of how much more maturity they develop their sound, and I think there's a lot of people out there that would love Nightwish. I've never heard that development, never heard what Nightwish ended up being, and never heard the album songs, which is where Nightwish really shine. They're not, yes, they have some radio songs, but they're not like an Iron Maiden where majority, like eighty you got so many good songs, Iron Maiden, but 80% of the songs that everyone knows and fell in love with Maiden are promotional singles. There's things like The Trooper, Run to the Hills, uh Ace is High, Two Minutes to Midnight. They're these kind of like banger tracks that were released as promotional singles with music videos on radio, and they got the fans in that way. And yeah, there's songs like Hallowed Be Thy Name and even Passion Dale that are longer, more progressive, that the fans now love as well. But the classics from Iron Maiden are those banger tracks that generally are promotional singles. Uh, you don't get that with Nightwish, they are banger classic tracks. Uh Ghost Love Score, Greatest Show on Earth, Poet and the Pendulum. These are songs that will never be played on radio, they'll never have music videos accompanying them. So, how are these fans meant to get into them and be introduced to them? And that's the struggle I think Nightwish have had. I think they are a mega band now, very successful, hugely successful. The most iconic and successful symphonic metal band of all time. However, they could be bigger. I genuinely think Nightwish could be up there with the likes of Iron Maiden and Metallica in terms of popularity worldwide. I genuinely think they've got songs good enough for that. I think they've got albums good enough to be that successful. I think the band members are talented as musicians enough to get there. I think the only thing holding them back is exposure, ultimately. I think even people who only listen to pop, for example, uh with that, you know, standard pop structure where the chorus has to hit you within 30 seconds and be the main hook, and then you got verse chorus, verse chorus, ah done. Maybe a key change on the final chorus, and that's it. That's as standard as pop gets, really. I think even those people would find something in Nightwish that they would like, something they would gear to. I think Nightwish probably are the band for female metal fans in terms of if all females had to rate a number one metal band. I think Nightwish would come out top overall, but there's just not as many females listening to metal as there are males, and therefore I think Nightwish has a smaller demographic there almost, although I think it's so much here for males to listen to as well. I don't think he should be genderizing Nightwish. The songs are too good, they are just too good. The way Tuomos tells his stories, writes his melodies and his riffs, I think are so beautiful, interesting, engaging. And if I just want to rock out, there's songs where I can just rock out romanticide, for example. If I just want a headbang, just chuck romanticide on, and you can do that. If I want something more beautiful, then there's plenty of that as well. I think what I'm trying to say in my conclusion for Nightwish is that they haven't hit their ceiling. I think if they were perhaps American and had the capitalist nature of America behind them, pushing them, which, let's be honest, two of us would hate, given his uh some of the theories he's put in some of his songs in the past. Uh I think they would have made more money, had more notoriety, and had more followers than they do, despite them fact they're still being massive. But their main fan base is in that kind of Scandinavian part of Europe where you know there's countries in and around Finland and Finland itself. But their songs deserve so much more. And I wish something like uh a phenomenon like Stranger Things, you know, what they did for Kate Bush and even Metallica when they didn't even need it, uh, how much they've pushed them by just featuring uh Running Up the Hill and Master of Puppets on there. I wish there was another TV phenomenon coming along and utilize Nightwish in the same way because I think they would double-triple their fan base almost overnight if they that happened to them. And I think they deserve it, their songs deserve it. Uh they are a huge, huge metal band, but I think also there are for some areas of the world, for some people and certain fans of certain genres, I think there are also a little hidden gem there as well. So this wraps up my Nightwish series. It's been a mammoth one, nine episodes, probably 15 to 16 hours worth of content, but I hope you've enjoyed it. I try to go into quite a bit of detail uh where I can to really, really tell the story of Nightwish, because I think it's a good story to tell, and I love the way their music, how it evolves over time, and how we've got to the Nightwish we have today, where I think they are one of the best live acts in the world. Now we will be back with a new series soon. Uh remember we do two types of formats here in the show. We do these big bands like Nightwish and Iron Maiden, where we cover their story, their discography in chronological order, and we pick out those hidden gem tracks from each album. On today's uh album, Yesterwind, of course. We picked out the Antikythera Mechanism and Spider Silk, and we've kind of dissected them as we have on the other Nightwish albums on the previous episodes. We did that with Iron Maiden, and we do that going forward as well with other new bands on new series. The other format we do is we pick out that band that are a hidden gem themselves, a band that are underloved and underappreciated, that deserve more notoriety in the world. And we picked out for our first series in that format the Diablo Swing Orchestra, the most unique uh band I have ever heard. Avant guard metal, but done so well. If you want to hear some swing metal, some jazz metal, some video game metal, some opera metal, they've done literally any kind of fusion with metal, and I recommend checking out those episodes if you've never heard the Diablo Swing Orchestra, because they deserve more love. Now, if you have a band in mind in the rock or metal genre that you would like me to cover for either of those kind of formats, just email in to the email address in the podcast episode description, and we will do our best to take that into account. And if I do take into account your suggestion, I will give you a shout out. So please put a couple of lines on there as well to tell us why we should cover this band so I can tell all the listeners too why we should cover your band. This is Rock and Metal's Hidden Gems Podcast. As always, I am your host, Daniel Stuckey, and thank you so much once again, not just for listening to this episode, but if you've been on a journey of Nightwish with us, thank you for listening to the whole journey. It's been an absolute pleasure, and we will see you very soon with a brand new series on this podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and see you in the next one. Bye bye.