This Finnish symphonic metal band has some incredibly moving songs.
- There are some people who can't even listen to "Dead Boy's Poem," because it depresses them so much. "Comforting home, mother's lap, chance for immortality — where being wanted became a thrill I never knew," and, "I live no more to shame, nor me, nor you, and you: I wish I didn't feel for you anymore."
- "10th Man Down". Everything, from Tarja's anguished vocals, to the lyrics, to the rapid-fire delivery of the chorus, really sells this War Is Hell song.
- "The Poet and the Pendulum" isn't tearjerky at start, but is very emotionally fraying. You're pumped up, you're nostalgic, you're disturbed, you're creeped out... Then comes the soft and emotional final part ("Be still, my son... you're home...") at which point you burst into tears.
- "Kuolema Tekee Taiteilijan" from Once definitely qualifies. For starters, the title means "Death Makes an Artist" in Finnish.
- Tuomas crying during "Ever Dream" on End of an Era.
- "The Crow, The Owl and the Dove" and that damn ending of this (official) fan video
, hoo boy. The video in question features a small girl drawing a picture of a kite being flown, the scene transitions to her running on a beach with said kite and subsequently meeting all three titular birds and the swan. The swan turns into a spirit and pulls the girl into the water, the spirit then abruptly does a U-turn and flies through the sky with the girl, the three titular birds eventually flying alongside her as well. As the girl suddenly closes her eyes, we see she's actually in a hospital with the drawing next to her. Her spirit then appears with the three birds just outside the window, heavily suggesting that she died.- In Finnish mythology, the birds featured in the song are as follows:
- The Crow: Crows are often seen as the heralds of death, in this case receiving news of a terminal illness or realizing your passing is soon.
- The Owl: Wisdom, reflecting upon where life has taken you even in the twilight of your own life.
- The Dove: Peace. Coming to terms with death.
- Finally, The Swan: They are the ones who carries the soul of the dead to the other side of the River Tuonela (Death River).
- In Finnish mythology, the birds featured in the song are as follows:
- Tarja and Anette's departures are seen as this by different factions of the fandom.
- In 2014 Anette gave an interview where she explained why she had been against hiring Floor as a then temporary replacement:
"I didn't think it was a good idea, because I knew what would happen — I knew the fans would love Floor, because she's a metal singer and I'm a pop singer, and I wanted to keep my job. I received a lot of hatred against my voice and my persona. If I had been Tarja, I wouldn’t have been nervous about having Floor step in because I’d know the fans would wait for me. They would have been saying ‘We want Tarja back.’ If I’d agreed to Floor coming in I would end up thinking ‘This whole thing again?’ when I came back. I could see what would happen." - In 2014 Anette gave an interview
- It is extremely hard to do justice in describing "Song of Myself". It starts as a intense, driving power metal piece that pumps you up and gets your heart racing, then holds you there in suspense as it transitions into a dramatic ballad punctuated with heavy guitar and percussion riffs, and then at about seven minutes in it hits the sudden switch, dropping into an absolutely heartrending segment of orchestral music and dialogue that will make a grown man sob at the beauty and the sadness of it all. It's the kind of song that makes you look back at your life and go "Did I do it right?""Dear child, stop working. Go play. Forget every rule. There's no fear in a dream.""How can you just 'be yourself' if you don't even know who you are? Stop saying, 'I know how you feel.' How can anyone know what another feels?""I will never be the man my father was."
- Made even sadder as you realize this song is the album parallel to the final scene of Imaginaerum, where Thomas regains his clarity just long enough to reconcile with his daughter Gem, before finally passing away.
- The story for the music video "Amaranth" - two boys find a fallen angel who is unconscious and bleeding from the eyes. They bandage her up as best they can and carry her back to their house, where she wakes up and seems to trust the boys. Sounds heartwarming, until we see that the villagers the boys passed are paranoid about the angel and form a mob. They storm the house and drag the boys out, leaving the blind angel crying and feeling for them, before setting the house on fire and destroying the angel. The only bit of good at the end is the implication that the angel escaped back to heaven, at least.
- "Our Decades in the Sun" is a tribute to the band members' parents. According to Holopainen, band members actually cried while rehearsing and recording the song.
- "The Greatest Show on Earth". Every second of it will bring any person to Tears of Joy. It's a big, epic celebration of planet Earth and everything that has been accomplished so far and a reminder that we are but a bunch of lucky lifeforms to have made it into existence and experienced the wonder that is life. The final chant of "We were here!" will make any grown man be driven to tears. And then comes the multiple Richard Dawkins monologues read by Dawkins himself...
- The music video for the song "Procession", from the HVMAN. :||: NATVRE album. It may not be this at first, until you listen closely to the lyrics. It's about life and the animals suffering. If the lyric "Another birth, another monster" didn't make this clear to you yet, the song slowing to a crawl at 1:53 and seeing a picture of a Bengal Tiger and the word "Endangered" below it will. The video then proceeds to list all of the endangered animals on our planet for one minute of the video to drive the point further, before the song picks up again at the 3-minute mark.
- The reveal that Marko had been struggling with chronic depressionnote , insomnia, anxiety and (at the time) undiagnosed ADHD, and his farewell statement in general.
- This has made certain things Harsher in Hindsight - for example, if one watches Decades: Live in Buenos Aires, you can see that Marko is struggling, most noticeably during Kinslayer, where he outright misses the first line of the spoken word section and snaps "Fuck me!"
- Then there's his full reveal in 2023 of what he had been struggling with:
On his mental health struggles: "It was a long process. Of course, the COVID year that was there, where I had a lot of time for soul searching, it obviously gave me the last incentive that I need something else, that if I just continue with this I'm just gonna get sicker and sicker. But, of course, it's a process. I've been chronic depressive since 2010 [or] 2011, so I've been on a permanent medication ever since [...] Sometimes you get used to the meds [and] you will need more. We did raise [the dosage] during the years also, but it just didn't work. And now that I started to do… I had psychotherapy for over four years now, and then I also talked to psychiatrists and some doctors and did that also in Spain. Then my psychiatrist here in Finland said that I should do these ADHD neuropsychological tests, which I then did in Spain. And, okay, I got it. [I had been thinking about leaving Nightwish for a while] [because] I had a lot of weight. And I tend to… With the attention disorder, it tells me that when there are lots of trouble, then the disorder makes it into a real chaos. There's a shitload of stuff coming and going and no peace anywhere. And for a year or two, I was already waking up every night at three o'clock to bad dreams and anxiety. So I'd say that the whole process probably started already with my former divorce [in 2016]. That was a very sad time when you think about your kids and your broken homes and all that. And then, when I started to get clear from that, then there were, well, all kinds of things. I don't really wanna go any deeper to what kind of things I'd gone through, but I'd gone through enough.—-On his role in HVMAN. :||: NATVRE: "I think the original idea was to have that… we'll do a couple of [solo vocal appearances], or one solo for me and Troy [Donockley], and the rest Floor [Jansen], and then the harmonies; that was the idea originally for that, so I don't know if it [was] affected. I think it was sort of as planned. But at that time I already had serious trouble with concentrating and serious trouble with a constant black cloud over my head."
