“I don’t understand music. It’s still a mystery to me…” Up close with Nightwish’s Tuomas Holopainen

Having already informed their label that Nightwish wouldn’t be doing any touring to promote it, Tuomas Holopainen had even more good, business-sense news.

At a meeting to discuss the plan of attack for the band’s upcoming 10th album, he informed them that the first single was to be the track Perfume Of The Timeless, a near nine-minute epic. Apparently, there’s data drawn from crunching millions of hours of listener data that says Spotify listeners tend to skip in less than 30 seconds if there’s no vocals by then.

With this in mind, he had even better news: the vocals are way off that goal line. The chorus doesn’t come in until the song’s been going three-and-a-half minutes, when most tracks are all done and out of there.

“I told them all this,” he grins. “And they said, ‘Great!’”

This was fine. Partly because Nightwish have spent most of the century as comfortably one of the biggest metal bands in Europe, and as such have the cash and the clout to be the ones telling those around them how it is. More, though, because it’s Tuomas doing exactly this sort of thing that’s put the Finnish sympho-metallers in such a position in the first place.

“I don’t plan things like this, ever,” he laughs. “This is just what comes out of me, how things end up. In some ways, I feel I have no control over it.”

Tuomas is telling us all this in a very nice suite in a very nice hotel in a very nice part of Berlin. The album, Yesterwynde, is prime Nightwish, more dialled-in than 2020’s folk-heavy Hvman :||: Natvre, while also finding Tuomas indulging in some of his biggest-ever flights of fancy. It’s something for which one might thank the isolation of COVID.

With that album having hit shelves a month after the first lockdowns (“Tough luck there,” he shrugs), Tuomas found himself at home in northern Finland, not far from the Russian border with not much to do. For a time, it wasn’t even possible to enter or leave the capital, Helsinki, because of lockdown restrictions. And with no tourists, his own hometown was even quieter and remote-feeling than normal.

As a man with a reclusive streak anyway, this suited Tuomas just fine. Preferring creating to performing – although he stresses he does love that – he at first started using his time wisely to make music. Before long, his usual focus and attention to detail began running away with him.

“I became borderline obsessive with the songs. I remember writing them on Christmas Eve and birthdays, because I just couldn't let go,” he recalls. “Every single night, I would listen to the demos from my dictaphone while having a smoke outside, and I would be coming up with new ideas as I listened. I just love that process. It's my favourite part of the whole thing.”

At the same time, Tuomas began devouring books. As he read, he began to get ideas for songs. He learned about The Antikythera Mechanism, the ancient Greek computer used for astronomy, and put it into a song of the same name. He discovered the story of a group of children stranded on an island for 15 months in the 1960s, which would become the song The Children Of Ata.

“Nobody in the world knows about these kids, and I just get so excited and inspired by things like that that I think, ‘Okay, we have to tell this in Nightwish language, so that people will know this beautiful story.’

“My brain is constantly working. I'm not sitting in front of the keyboard all the time, but I'm thinking about creating stuff constantly. I guess it's just a matter of personality. But I get so excited so easily over things that I experience, or read or see. And it goes inside, and then I have to either write music or write words or do something. Let it out.”

Tuomas has always been like this. When he talks about creating music, a word that comes up often is “imagination”. Even looking back to the earliest days of the band in the late ’90s, a time in which such flamboyant fare was not the route-one road to the success Nightwish would come to enjoy, there’s still a similar intent there.

“It was very peculiar and weird,” he reflects now of their earliest efforts. “And if it wasn't for our manager who signed us, the only one who saw potential in the first demo, we wouldn't be here.

“I had no idea, no expectations, just big ambitions when it comes to music and how it should sound. We never thought we would ever be able to play a tour outside Finland. We were all studying elsewhere. Jukka [Nevalainen, former drummer] was supposed to become a computer engineer. I was studying classical music in Germany, I had my own ambitions. So it was all over the place. Nightwish was just a hobby, that we gave some effort. And then after a couple of years, we were in the Top Five in Finland. We were like, ‘Okay, let’s give this another year or two…’ And here we are.”

Twenty-eight years in, Nightwish’s success is such that Tuomas, now 47, can indulge himself however he wants artistically, while also shrugging off the idea of an arena-level band not touring in a time when musicians’ income is mostly drawn from the road. They’ll probably play live again, he says, but at the moment it’s best for everyone not to be doing it.

In the meantime, Tuomas has plenty he’s busying himself with. He enjoyed reconnecting with his old black metal band Darkwoods My Betrothed over lockdown for their first new music in 23 years so much that he hopes to be able to do more. He also has stuff in the works with his more soundtracky, Pink Floyd-influenced project Auri.

Right now, though, asked what he’s up to, Tuomas is enjoying a simpler life.

“I started reading really avidly, something I hadn't done in years. I used to be a constant reader in my teenage years. And after that, but then I kind of forgot about it,” he says. “After COVID, I've been reading two books a month. I also found the joy of Nordic walking, with sticks. It's the most un-rock’n’roll thing on the planet, but I love doing it in the woods every day.”

When it comes to music, it’s lost none of its lustre. Yesterwynde is the product of, as he says, obsession. You don’t get records like it without that. When he talks about writing, or playing, or seeing creations come to life, he does so with the same enthusiasm as ever he has when we’ve spoken to him ahead of an album. Possibly more, in fact, not having had to filter it through the idea of playing it live. Recalling the recording of orchestral parts at London’s Abbey Road Studios, he does so with genuine reverence and disbelief at creating there. Though oft seen as Nightwish’s top-hatted musical magician, Tuomas is also still an artist feeling his way.

“It just keeps me intrigued all the time, because I don't understand music. It's still a mystery to me,” he says. “I can't tell you where those melodies come from. I can't tell you why a sustained chord sounds so beautiful to my ears, and why a major seventh sounds so awful to me. I can't give any explanation why. It brings tears to my eyes to hear a beautiful cello playing, and whenever I hear the sound of a Hammond organ, I can't stand it. There is no rational explanation to these things. So that's why I love searching through music, diving into it, not understanding what's going on, and being affected by it constantly.”

The other thing that’s so often been a feature of his music is hope, even in the darkest numbers. On Yesterwynde, it’s there in The Children Of Ata, but also in the ideas that life is a finite thing, that there have been many before ours and will be many after us, too. As he previously told us, “The whole theme of the album is time, history, humanism, mortality. It’s really optimistic”.

“It's so easy to fall down that mire, and it's easy to blame the darkness, but hard to light the candle instead,” Tuomas says. “Especially during these times when there are so many terrifying things happening all around the world. It is hard to see the light, but it is there. And I hope this album reminds mankind of that.

“I’m very lucky that I’m able to feel that I’ve done something meaningful during the last 28 years. I've been able to do what I love, get a lot of stuff out of my head, so I can function among the species of man. Maybe through this thing that we have been doing for so long, we have been able to spread entertainment and comfort and hope to other people. I've always thought that happiness comes through doing something meaningful in your life. And I feel really happy.”

A final thought. While explaining some of the things that inspired Yesterwynde, Tuomas tell us about seeing a website of old photos retouched as though they were taken in modern times.

“They've all had their lives, their ups and downs, and they don't exist anymore, except as atoms scattered all over the universe,” he says. “And we're going to be in that state pretty soon as well. That should give you something to think about.”

Are you sure you’re not just worried about getting older?

“Quite the contrary! I’m glad for what I’ve been able to do,” he smiles. “I first met you 21 years ago. Imagine that same time 21 years from now, I'll be almost 70. Time is the worst thing – it fucks with your mind! There’s the ultimate cliché of seize the day. That's something that I think about more and more.

“We're all going to be dead soon,” he shrugs. “It's just a matter of what you're gonna do before that. And I feel lucky I get to do what I’m doing.”

Yesterwynde is out now via Nuclear Blast

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