Albums of Purgatory interview Nightwish's Jukka Nevalainen
- Albums of Purgatory: Whats the band up to right now?
- Jukka Nevalainen: We'll continue our tour on 13th July.
It's really nice to get on the road again and I'm looking forward for these shows. After
two festival shows in Finland we have 8 shows in South-America. It'll be wild!!! REALLY
wild!!!
- AoP: How would you describe the Nightwish sound?
- JN: Our sound is an mixture of movie-music, pure old
fassioned heavy-metal and something that can't be described. This third element is
something I can't compare to anything else I've heard so maybe it's something we've
created... I don't know...
- AoP: How did the band begin in '96?
- JN: Tuomas wanted to do music of his own and started a
project which recorded a demo called "Nightwish". After that he desided to add
drums, bass and distorded guitar in music and that's when first Nightwish album got
recorded. So name "Nightwish" comes from the first demo which had a song called
Nightwish.
- AoP: Can you remember your first gig (how did it go)?
- JN: It went very well. We have an video-tape from it so
maybe we'll release it some day. =) The first gig was in our home town where we played in
this hall where was held disco for younger people.
- AoP: Your first song, carpenter, reached number eight in
the Finnish charts. How did that feel?
- JN: It was like a dream. We never imagined that we would
be on the charts and then our first single reaches there. It was really weird to see
your band in chart-program in tv because we really were just a beginners in music.
- AoP: What sort of reaction have you been getting from
your fans and press for the new album, "Century Child"?
- JN: It's quite interesting to follow the discussion about
our new album because it really has splitted peoples opinions. Many people say that it's
our best album ever and that it's something amazing and then on the other hand some people
say that it sucks. And I think it's not an easy album because we get so much different
kind of feedback from it. Some say it's more commercial than our previous albums and then
other people say:: "You made real heavy album!!! Much more metal than ever before!!!
Good for you!!!" Press has liked the album very much or at least I haven't seen any
negative review from it.
- AoP: What are your favourite Nightwish tracks?
- JN: "Beauty Of The Beast", "10th Man
Down" and "The Kinslayer"
- AoP: What are your favourite all time songs?
- JN: The whole Dream Theater "Scenes From A
Memory" -album and the whole Gladiator soundtrack.
- AoP: What would be your dream band line-up?
- JN: Vocals: James LaBrie and Celine Dion
- Guitar: This one is
hard... Let' say Alexi Laiho.
- Drums: Me, Myself and Mike
Portnoy. =)
- AoP: What do you think of the position of metal and music
in general today?
- JN: It's better than ever. Or at least its quality
is better than ever. Of cause it would be nice if more people would understand what good
music is all about but well, genius people have always been minority...
- AoP: Do you have any funny stories you can share with us
about the band?
- JN: This one is asked very often and it's always very
difficult to answer to it. There has been numerous funny situations but when you should
remember one you're mind is blank. Well here's one:
We played in Marceille (I guess) in our previous European
tour and Tuomas had broke his keyboard in previous gig. He got new one and he didn't
remember to delete the demo songs from the memory of the keyboard. During the show
when we were playing "Beauty and The Beast" there started to come some stupid,
annoying techno-music from PA. We had to stop playing because it was very load. No one
knew where did it come from until our F.O.H. realized that it's coming from the keyboards
and came to the stage and pushed the stop button. It was funny at the beginning but when
it continued for several minutes it started to be quite irritating. At least the audience
got a great laughs.
- AoP: and finally, what do you see in the future for
Nightwish?
- JN: Hopefully many more great album are still to come and
many great gigs to play!!!