Not many bands can say that they have a record deal before playing their first gig.
For Karelian symphonic metal band Nightwish, it’s just one act in a long and improbable story leading from the shores of Lake Pyhajarvi to the four corners of the globe.
That story begins in 1996 near the town of Kitee, North Karelia, Finland, a place known for its frostbitten winters and for its history of bootlegging moonshine.
Photo courtesy of Ville Akseli Juurikkala
Add to that the city’s proximity to the Russian border, those on the other side with whom the Finns have a long and contentious relationship, and you’ve got conflict, strong liquor and cold. The recipe for success for any aspiring metal band.
As the band lore goes, guitarist Tuomas Holopainen had an idea for an atmospheric acoustic project one night while sitting around a campfire on an island in the middle of Lake Pyhajarvi.
By April of the following year Holopainen would be fleshing out a seven-song demo with virtuoso vocalist Tarja Turunen, guitarist Erno “Emppu” Vuorinen and drummer Jukka Nevalainen.
That demo then draws the attention of Finnish label Spinefarm Records, Nightwish is offered a deal, and their debut album, Angels Fall, boasts a single that makes it into the Finnish top 10.
Only then does the band take to the stage for the first time, playing a hometown New Year’s Eve show to some 400 punters who, unbeknownst to them, were getting in on the ground floor of the most commercially successful band to come out of Finland to date.
Fast forward 20 years, seven albums and about eight million units in worldwide sales, and Holopainen and Vuorinen are the last original members left standing. The most jarring and dramatic changes have come at the vocal position.
In 2005, following a performance at Helsinki’s Hartwall Arena, Turunen was handed a letter signed by all four of her band mates. After a group hug, something the band usually did before gigs, not after, she was told to read the letter the following day.
The letter expressed the sentiment that Turunen felt her own fame had outgrown the band, she allegedly making comments such as “I don’t need Nightwish anymore,” and “Remember, Tuomas, that I could leave this band at any time, giving you only one day’s warning in advance.”
The band published the letter on their Web site. The damage was done. They launched a search for a new singer while Turunen went on to forge a solo career that, according to her own open letter, she never sought.
Since Turenen’s departure Nightwish has seen the coming and going of her replacement, Anette Olzen, who was in turn to be replaced by current singer Floor Jansen. Jansen’s coming out party was last year’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful, an album acclaimed nearly across the board.
Critics praised the band’s ability to stay within itself, avoiding the temptation to go for some grand and bombastic display of over-the-top operatic prowess that can lure like a siren song when members change and the feeling that there is something to prove looms large.
Things in the Nightwish camp have quieted down considerably in the past few years. Is this finally the end of the turmoil? It’s near impossible to say. When you hail from the frozen borderlands of booze and bedlam, the shifting form of chaos follows like the drifting snow.
■ Nightwish plays tomorrow night at National Taipei University of Technology (台北科技大學大會堂中正館), 1, Zhongxiao E Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市忠孝東路三段一號). Tickets range from NT$1,800 to NT$6,000 for a VIP package, available at FamiPort kiosks. Doors open at 6pm and the show starts at 7pm.
Perhaps not since the days of the Feirenbang (廢人幫), or Useless Motherfuckers, the punk gang active in Taichung from the mid-nineties to the mid-aughts, has Taiwan found itself with a cohesive punk scene. That could be set to change.
This weekend will see a two-day punk fest in Taipei, the first of its kind in recent memory. Ten bands crawling out from the various substrata of the genre and hailing from locales stretching from Kaohsiung to Taipei will come together at Revolver, bringing sounds ranging from the the more bubblegum end of the spectrum to the gutters it would get tossed into.
Some of the bands on the bill, such as Giant Lobsters (大龍蝦樂團) and The Sackgasse (死胡同), definitely fall into the Fire Ex (滅火器) school of Taiwanese pop punk, their focus on hooky harmonized choruses and catchy three-chord verses borrowed from the likes of Green Day and Blink-182.
Chiayi’s Flower Dregs (花渣) are one of the most accessible bands taking part, getting their cues from the Japanese school of pop punk pioneered by the likes of Hi-Standard and Hawaiian6.
Leading the bands edging toward punk’s political side is Accomplices (共犯結構), who recently released a new demo track, Kill the Migrant Workers (殺死異鄉人).
The song rails along in classic three-chord street punk style against the lack of protection for Southeast Asian care givers, factory workers and fishermen suffering widespread exploitation in Taiwan due to a lack of protection from the country’s labor laws.
It doesn’t get anymore punk than that.
■ Revolution Night (叛客之夜) Vol 10 Two-Day Punk Fest, tomorrow and Sunday at Revolver, 1-2 Roosevelt Road, Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市中正區羅斯福路一段1-2號). Tickets for either day are NT$350 with a drink, NT$200 for students. Bands take the stage at 6:30pm on Saturday and 7pm on Sunday.
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