Tarja - Colours In The Dark (CD Review)

01.Victim Of Ritual
02.500 Letters
03.Lucid Dreamer
04.Never Enough
05.Mystique Voyage
06.Darkness
07.Deliverance
08.Neverlight
09.Until Silence
10.Medusa

Tarja Turunen (Vocals/Piano)
Alex Scholpp (Guitar)
Julian Barrett (Guitar)
Kevin Chown (Bass)
Doug Wimbish (Bass)
Christian Kretschmar (Keyboards)
Mike Terrana (Drums)
Max Lilja (Cello)

Guest Musicains
Thomas Bloch (Glass Harmonica)
Saro Danielian (Duduk)
Justin Furstenfeld (Vocal on Medusa)
Caroline Lavelle (Cello)
Naomi Cabuli Turunen (Vocals On Lucid Dreamer)
Mel Wesson (Synth)

At the end of 2005, Turunen performed several classical concerts in Finland, Germany, Spain, and Romania.Since she expected to participate in another Nightwish album, several concerts and the release of her Christmas album Henkäys Ikuisuudesta were the only activities scheduled for 2006. Turunen again played at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in July 2006, In November she performed at the charity concert “Tomorrow's Child” with the Tapiola Choir as a benefit for the UNICEF Children's Fund. On December 6, Turunen performed a big concert at the Sibelius Hall and was nominated for the Finnish Emma Award as Best Soloist of 2006.

The following year, Turunen recorded vocals for the track "In The Picture" on the Nuclear Blast All-stars album Into the Light.
Her solo album'My Winter Storm' was released featuring various styles, including symphonic metal with classical “operatic” lead vocals.

In November she embarked on the Storm World Tour to promote My Winter Storm. She performed 95 concerts throughout Europe, North and South America and ended the tour in October 2009 at the O2 Academy Islington in London.In December 2008, the EP The Seer was released in the UK and the new extended edition of My Winter Storm released on January 2, 2009.

She also contributed three songs to the Finnish charity Christmas album Maailman kauneimmat joululaulut,In December 2009 she recorded her vocal part for the song "The Good Die Young", a duet with Klaus Meine which is included on the final Scorpions album Sting in the Tail.

Turunen recorded her third album, What Lies Beneath, in 2009 and 2010; it was released in September 2010. The album combined metal with classical “operatic” elements in an out of the box approach.[52] She started the What Lies Beneath World Tour performing in several festivals, including the Wacken Open Air and the Graspop Metal Meeting, with special concerts at Miskolc Opera Festival and at the Masters of Rock, when she performed accompanied by a full orchestra. The tour is scheduled to last until April 2012.

Turunen with her support band at the Wacken Open Air, August 6, 2010
On February 27, 2012 during her What Lies Beneath World Tour concert in Brussels, Turunen announced that she will be working on a new album after completing the tour. During the concert she already presented 2 new songs.
In March 2012, Tarja won the title 'Europe's best crossover performer' with over 100.000 votes.

In May 2013, Tarja announced the title of her 4th solo album, Colours In The Dark.
The name of the album, as the cover image, came as a metaphor from the idea that life has a large range of colors and the dark absorb all of them, containing every color.

Its a Tarja album, so you know what you gonna get lots of superb vocals over symphonic rock and metal music, and thats exactley what this is, have to pick out a few tracks though such as 'Never Enough' which is very dramatic and heavy, 'Mystique Voyager' for its classical theme with amazing chorus vocals.

The Peter Gabriel cover is pretty good, but the last track featuring Justin Furstenfeld (WHO?) is a bit average.

Rating 9/10

For fans of : Nightwish, Epica, ReVamp, Within Temptation

ReVamp - Wild Card (CD Review)

01.The Anatomy Of A Nervous Breakdown: On The Sideline
02.The Anatomy Of A Nervous Breakdown: The Limbic System
03.Wild Card
04.Precibus
05.Nothing
06.The Anatomy Of A Nervous Breakdown: Neurasthenia
07.Distorted Lullabies
08.Amendatory
09.I Can Become
10.Misery's No Crime
11.Wolf and Dog

Floor Jansen (Vocals)
Arjan Rijnen (Guitar)
Jord Otto (Guitar)
Henk Vonk (Bass)
Ruben Wijga (keyboards)
Matthias Landes (Drums)

Guest Musicians:
Devin Townsend (Vocal on 'Neurasthenia)
Mark Jansen (Guitar)
Marcela Bovio (Vocals)
Johan van Stratum (Bass)
Daniel de Jongh (Vocals)

Singer Floor Jansen needs no further introduction after 12 years of loyal service with After Forever, when member Sander Gommans suffered a burnout in the beginning of 2008. Jansen posted on her website that while the band was put on hold, she was going to use the opportunity to start writing music with Jørn Viggo Lofstad for a new musical project.
In February 2009, After Forever ultimately decided to call it quits, and on June 16, 2009, Floor announced through her MySpace site that she had started a new metal band, which put her musical project with Jørn Viggo on hold. On October 17, of 2009, Jansen announced that the name of the band was going to be ReVamp.

The word revamp literally means: to renovate, redo or revise. For Floor it got the symbolic meaning that this band puts new energy into her career as a singer, a next step but at the same time a continuation of her dream. The word 'vamp' indicates, with a wink, 'woman'.

In the few years of REVAMP’s young existence the band endured many challenges and unexpected circumstances. Heavy winter storms with long periods of suffocating frost! Followed by sudden summer rains with wild streams of water that’s taking everything with it into unknown territory. A survival of the fittest! REVAMP came out stronger, more mature and with darker and more brutal music that tells the tale of this wild ride!

Singer Floor: “Never before in my career I faced a situation like the one we were in with this album. It was a huge challenge because of several reasons. My sickness caused a major break between the first album and tours plus the writing of the first ideas for the second album and the actual finalization of those songs and the album. And right at the moment we started to pick everything back up after I was sick I joined Nightwish (As replacement for Anette Olzon). Like a winter and a summer storm, they bring unexpected things, some nasty ones and some amazingly wonderful!"

So many female fronted symphonic metal bands, a very few ever live up to expectations, so it is a a nice change to hear something that is actually better than expected!

A fast and heavy start with 'On The Sideline' with a powerful vocal, but plenty of melody giving it a commercial edge as well.
Floor can hit the high notes without making you shudder and there is some evil male vocal lurking in the background.
This pace remains for the next few songs and then we come to 'Neurasthenia' an outstanding piece of music with guest vocals from Devin himself, and it sounds like Floor was pushing her vocals all the way to match his power, and together they pull off a faultless performance.

This is followed by the beautiful and melancholic, 'Distorted Lullabies' with just vocal and piano, though the distorted part later kicks in with some serious riffs!

The heavy returns on 'Amendatory' and 'I Can Become' the latter with a really neat keyboard swirl running throughout.

Then (and i had to check twice that i hadnt loaded up a Dimmu Borgir track by mistake) we come to 'Misery's No Crime' with a full on Black Metal vocal, only when Floor's voice comes in do i realise it is Revamp afterall, awesome track!

'Wolf And Dog' is a bass heavy song with classic stop start riffs and drums.

Rating 10/10

For Fans Of : Devin Townsend Project, Tristania, Within Temptation

NIGHTWISH - IMAGINAERIUM (CD Review)

01.Taikatalvi
02.Storytime
03.Ghost River
04.Slow, Love, Slow
05.I Want My Tears Back
06.Scaretale
07.Arabesque
08.Turn Loose The Mermaids
09.Rest Calm
10.The Crow, The Owl And The Dove
11.Last Ride Of The Day
12.Song of Myself
13.Imaginaerum

Anette Olzon (vocals)
Tuomas Holopainen (keyboards/Piano)
Emppu Vuorinen (Guitars)
Marco Hietala (Bass/Vocals)
Jukka Nevalainen (Drums)

Additional Musicians/Guests:
Troy Donockley (Uillean Pipes/Tin Whistle/Vocals/Bodhran/Bouzouki)
Dermot Crehan (Hardanger Fiddle)
Dirk Campbell (Sorna)
Guy Barker (Trumpet)
Paul Clarvis (Ethnic Percussion)
Etephen Henderson (Ethnic Percussion)
Pekka Kuusisto (Violin)
Jenny O'Grady & Metro Voice Choir
Lynda Richardson & Young Musicians London Choir
Pip Williams & London Philharmonic Orchestra


Imaginaerum is the seventh studio album by Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish and is also their most ambitious to date.The album is a concept album as said by Tuomas in an interview telling the story of an old composer on his deathbed, reminiscing of his youth and is a sister piece to the movie of the same name directed by Stobe Harju.

According to Holopainen, Imaginaerum is the first Nightwish album to have a real intro song 'Taikatalvi', which is also one of few Nightwish songs performed entirely in Finnish, this song also introduces the snow flake theme of the album and movie, as the Finnish word "taikatalvi" means "magic winter". It is also the Finnish title of the book Moominland Midwinter.

'Storytime' has punchy riffs and a melodic chorus and still sounds poppy.

Described as a duel between the Devil and Mother Gaia, 'Ghost River' is more theatrical and weirder than the rest of the album.

'Slow Love Slow' is a jazz-like song inspired by American 1930's nightclub music, inspired by David Lynch's Twin Peaks.

'I Want My Tears Back' Has some nice pipes on it, but not that amazing.

'Scaretale' has been described as the bands take on Metallica's "Enter Sandman".

The instrumental 'Arabesque' was created soley for the movie soundtrack.

'Turn Loose the Mermaids' is a "celtic, ballad, sad, melancholic" song, with a sort of spaghetti western inspired section.

Finally a heavy (ish) song appears,'Rest Calm' and was inspired by 'Paradise Lost' and 'My Dying Bride'.

'The Crow, the Owl and the Dove' is the only one written by bassist-vocalist Marco Hietala, who has written several songs for the band in the past. Holopainen has pointed out that it's "kind of funny that the most poppy song on the album is composed by the most metalhead dude in the band".

'Last Ride of the Day' is a song about a roller coaster.

Coming in at an epic fourteen minutes is 'Song Of Myself' It is inspired by Holopainen's favorite poet Walt Whitman, and his famous poem of the same name, and the song includes a six-minute recitation of the poem.

The title track 'Imaginaerum' is the outro track of the album, conceived as what could run in the credits of the movie. Holopainen came up with the idea of making a medley of the album's main musical themes, and gave orchestral arranger Pip Williams free hands to make what he wanted of it, making it one of two songs off the album not composed entirely by Holopainen.

Rating:8/10
For fans of: Within Temptation, Epica.

Nightwish - Storytime (CD Single Review)

01.Storytime (Radio Edit)
02.Storytime (Album Version)
03.Storytime (Instrumental)


Anette Olzon (Vocals)
Tuomas Holopainen (Keyboards)
Emppu Vuorinen (Guitars)
Marco Hietala (Bass)
Jukka Nevalainen (Drums)


First single from the fourthcoming 'Imaginaerum' album.
The seventh album from the band and the second to feature vocalist Anette, this album is a concept album telling the story of an old composer on his deathbed, reminiscing of his youth. The album was produced alongside the movie of the same name, directed by Stobe Harju.

You can tell its Nightwish from the opening keyboard riff and that guitar sound never really changes, but its the vocal that still sounds odd, she still sounds like the AbbA girls (but then she did start off in an AbbA tribute band).

Its very commercial and not massivly inspiring though the choral and orchestral elements work well, but the album/movie project does sound very intresting.

RATING 6/10
For fans Of : Within Temptation, Epica, Achilla