I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I grabbed Once on a whim because I thought the cover and band looked cool. I absolutely loved it! Then I got End of an Era and while it was sad that Tarja was gone, I was still excited about this new band I had found. Then DPP came out and I was amazed once again (it's my favorite album by them.) By the time they had fired Anette a few weeks after I had seen them perform with her in 2012, I was pretty put off by the band. I followed up buying the first Floor album, but pretty much hated it on first listen and never went back. It's hardly the band I got into in 2005 anymore (no Tarja, Anette, Jukka, Marko...), and at this point I just don't care.
I had a somewhat similar journey with them, but different in some respects. Mine went like this:
-I discovered the band during the Once era. Saw some live footage online that blew me away, including two performances of Phantom of the Opera (one from the just-released End of an Era and pro-shot footage from their Lowlands concert). I picked up Century Child, Once, and End of an Era, and was blown away. They really appealed to my interests sonically, and I was generally excited about the band. I went back and picked up most of the back catalog and liked a good portion of it.
-I followed the band during the hunt for new singer and lead-up to DPP. There were things that bothered me about the album, but I still considered it an overall success. The lyrics on some songs, mainly the ones about Tarja, were REALLY offputting. But that aside, I think it was largely a good album. Anette wasn't the best on it, but I was willing to look past that, especially since the album was largely written before she was hired, so it was not written with her strengths and weaknesses in mind.
-Contrast that last sentence with Imaginaerum, which was written with her in the band. And it proved out what I had thought on the previous album: if Tuomas was able to write with a specific singer in mind, the results could be stellar. IMO, this album was.
-When she was dismissed and Floor brought in, I recognized it as an obvious upgrade, and the live show proved that out, especially the Wacken DVD.
-...but unfortunately, they follows that up with a truly awful album in EFMB. Honestly, if the lyrical content had been different, it wouldn't be half bad. But the lyrics are just too stupid to get past, and are really offputting. A concept album that is an anthem to Darwin and Dawkins is only going to get a laugh, and eyeroll, and a "no thank you" from me no matter how good the music, and the music just didn't go anywhere compelling for me on most songs.
-Human | Nature was better. There are a couple of songs on there that I really like, actually. But I'm so annoyed by both the lyrical content at time and how pretentious Tuomas can be, combined with the outside stuff surrounding the band, and the changes in personnel, that it's just a really big distraction that's hard for me to overcome. There are so many other bands out there where that isn't an issue for me that I can't be bothered to devote time to a band that does have those distractions.
Topic: Nightwish... (Read 318063 times)
