Review: Nightwish - Imaginaerum

Imaginaerum is the first Nightwish album in four years. It is a bold concept album. It is a movie. It is experimental. It is almost certainly not what you’re expecting. More than anything, it is a clear case of the devilish specter of ambition grabbing hold of the creator and dragging him into new depths faster than he can keep up. Imaginaerum is a lot of things, but the one thing it isn’t is the one it needs to be most - a cohesive album that satisfies from start to finish.

Uncertainty set in the moment I glanced at the track listing. “I Want My Tears Back”? “Turn Loose the Mermaids”? “Scaretale”? Who in their right mind let Tuomas label his creations with these hideous titles?

Nightwish has always been a band best experienced with no knowledge of the lyrical content, and Imaginaerum is no different, so let us continue to more important matters.  

“Taikatalvi” leads in with a hauntingly simple melody and the band adventurously deciding to lead in with their native language. One can’t help but take a quick glance at those track titles and wish they did this more often. “Taikatalvi” is undoubtedly beautiful, but there’s not enough here to satisfy. As with most pointless intro tracks, it ends right as its momentum builds to a peak, a great idea without a proper song to contain it.

Transitioning that momentum into lead single “Storytime” doesn’t do Imaginaerum any favors. Annette’s screechy vocals and the bored choirs ooh-ing in the background give off a decidedly lazy single vibe. “Storytime” is almost conspicuously generic, as if Nightwish knew they needed a traditional lead single to sell the album but their heart wasn’t in it. This is Nightwish composed by checklist, a feeling that slips into many of the band’s efforts to capture their more traditional sound on the album. It feels out of place among Imaginaerum’s wild experiments. 

“Ghost River” pulls out the lead guitar and some duet work to kick things more properly into gear. Screamy Marco from “Master Passion Greed” makes a cameo, as do the ever popular children’s choirs. Many of Imaginaerum’s tracks don’t manage to be both varied and cohesive, but this one pulls it off. Unfortunately, this roller coaster of an album is next booted into a slow jazz number, of all things, bottoming out the momentum before it gets off of the ground. Annette does a lot to make this more compelling than it could have been, but it’s out of place at best and an ill-fitting costume for the band at worst. 

“I Want My Tears Back” yanks the album kicking and screaming back into high gear with a celtic-influenced number led by spirited pipes. It’s not every day you get to hear a song that pits a soloing set of pipes against a guitar backed up by soft hand claps, but I’ll be damned if this one doesn’t do just that with a smile on its face and a catchy beat. It’s a shame this wasn’t the lead single. It fits the bill while better representing the eclectic nature of Imaginaerum. 

“Scaretale” gives Annette a musical playground to really have fun in. I’d love to see the classically trained Tarja try the fun vocal tricks Nightwish’s sophomore singer pulls off here. From sultry rasps to high-pitched squeals, this was a song written for Annette and it shows. “Scaretale” is like something straight out of The Nightmare Before Christmas. It screams Tim Burton. It’s bizarre in the best way and absolutely my favorite musical experiment on the album. 

“Arabesque” begins Imaginaerum’s descent into madness. It sounds like exactly what it is - a brief, awkward musical aside written to play behind a movie scene.  

“Turn Loose the Mermaids” at least gives the listener a breather at the right moment. It’s beautiful and tries to build to a strong conclusion, but the song ends too abruptly after a spirited celtic fiddle solo, spoiling the ending. “The Crow, the Owl, and the Dove” follows too quickly afterward and fares even worse, sounding straight off of a sappy pop album but with droning choirs slapped haphazardly in the background.

“Rest Calm”, a mid-paced chugger that’s about twice as long as it should be, falls into the same trap as “Storytime” and “Last Ride of the Day”. These tracks lack Imaginaerum’s interesting experimentation but aren’t good enough traditional Nightwish tunes to stand out. 

The less said about “Song of Myself” the better. It’s a pale joke compared to the epic masterpieces of “Ghost Love Score” and “The Poet and the Pendulum”. It manages to fill seven minutes with utterly forgettable guitars and obligatory choirs, then stops cold for six minutes of poetry while choirs “ooh” and “ahh” in the background because, well, this is fucking Nightwish, ok? What an ugly mess of a song. 

“Imaginaerum” is an instrumental reprise of the album that was clearly designed as closing credits music. It seems an anticlimactic way to close an album, especially after the thirteen minute wasteland that is “Song of Myself”, but it is at least a more compelling musical venture than “Arabesque”, for whatever that’s worth. It provides Imaginaerum’s musical highlights in six minutes of orchestration, making it a handy Cliff Notes version of the album for anyone unwilling to sit through the whole thing.

Imaginaerum is simultaneously spirited and tired. It bursts with experimentation while abusing musical crutches the band should have abandoned long ago. It gives us soaring highs and painful lows. Most of all it seems conflicted. It doesn’t know whether it’s a soundtrack or a Nightwish album and can’t be both at once. It defeats its own occasional moments of brilliance by  jumping around so much, even within one song, that nothing is ever allowed to settle. Little feels satisfying because you’re never allowed to sink your teeth into anything or get into the flow. It’s a cacophonous torrent of ideas with no focus. As much as I wanted to love it, Imaginaerum drowns in its own ambition and what we’re left with is a muddled album with moments of sheer brilliance that only the most patient will be able to appreciate.