Dark passion play

According to Tuomas Holopainen , the keyboard player of the group and the main composer, the album was originally called “The Poet and the Pendulum”, as well as the first song on the album ^[9] .

Nightwish began studio recordings of instrumental parts of Dark Passion Play in the fall of 2006, and ended in the spring of 2007. A total of 14 songs were recorded ^[10] . Orchestral recordings were made at Abby Road Studios in London in two sessions: one in mid-December and the next in February. As with the previous Once album, the group worked with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Metro Voices choir ^[10] . Vocal recordings began in February 2007, after Anette Olzon was selected as the new lead vocalist of the group. The album was mixed at the Finnvox studio in Helsinki in April-May 2007.

The creation of the album was worth € 500,000 , making it the most expensive album in the history of Finnish music. An additional 270,000 € was spent on the shooting of two clips ^[11] .

In January 2008, the album took first place in the album charts of six countries. The singles “ Amaranth ” and “ Erämaan viimeinen ” became the first in the Finnish charts. On February 5, 2010, the album went platinum five times: 150,000 copies were sold in Finland.

In October 2005, after a world tour in support of Once , lead vocalist Tarja Turunen was fired, as announced in an open letter from the group. To find a replacement for her, the group held hearings from March 17, 2006 to January 15, 2007, receiving about 2,000 demos. ^[12]

On May 24, 2007, it was officially announced that Anette Olzon , previously a member of the Swedish band Alyson Avenue , had become the new vocalist of Nightwish. In an interview, Holopainen said that they made this decision in January 2007, based on their impressions of how she sang “ Ever Dream, ” a song from Century Child's album ^[13] .

The first single, “ Eva, ” was leaked to the Internet six days before the official release, thereby forcing the band to release the single earlier in order to boost downloads. Some versions of other songs were posted on YouTube and torrent a month later. The entire album was leaked onto the Internet until August 2, 2007, including the voiceover of the company's record. The whole album (without a voiceover) was merged on September 21, 2007 through the fault of some stores in Mexico that sold the album retail long before the world release.

The video for the fourth single from Bye Bye Beautiful was previously uploaded to YouTube and similar sites.

Faster Harder Nightwish (Faster and heavier Nightwish) was announced as the name of the upcoming recording on April 1, 2007 on the official website. The name may have been borrowed from Scooter's single, “ Faster Harder Scooter .” They also unveiled a cover image, which led the community to believe that the band was completely changing its style from symphonic power to something like an alternative. . And in a few hours it was possible to find an “advertising sample” from an album on the net. Later on the official website it was stated that it was an April Fool’s joke ^{[15] [16]} .

Tuomas Holopainen about songs

• "The Poet And The Pendulum"

“This is a kind of soundtrack to my life over the past two years. I really love life and enjoy it, and I think this world is a very beautiful place, but sometimes I feel something like: “Oh, all shit, life sucks!”. And sometimes it’s so shitty that you don’t see any gap or at least a hint that everything will be fine. And this song is full of such thoughts. It was truly symbolic to kill yourself in this song ” [1] .

Nuclear Blast , Spinefarm Records and Roadrunner Records have released editions that include an instrumental version of the album.