Interviews

Anette Olzon has not yet seized role as band's front-(wo)man

By Jussi Ahlroth in Tel Aviv

“It’ll be OK when the band learn to play the numbers”, grunts Tuomas Holopainen in the bar of the Tel Aviv Sheraton. It is the afternoon before the opening gig of Nightwish’s world tour - a one-off in Israel. The band’s keyboardist, leader and composer is not exactly oozing self-confidence.
      Holopainen says he was so nervous at the clandestine warm-up gigs before the tour that it was all he could do to find the right keys and hit them in the right order.
     
Excitement, expectation, and pressures galore are stacked up for this evening’s gig. It’s a tour curtain-raiser, there’s a new singer onboard, new numbers from a brand new album, and it is the first time the band have performed in Israel.
      Sitting next to Holopainen, drinking green tea with milk in it, is Nightwish’s new Swedish vocalist Anette Olzon.
      Olzon laughs that with a rock band it’s pretty much a given that the vocals should go astray in a live setting. She’s right, of course, but the comment still gives a bit of an impression of playing safe and covering bases in advance of tonight’s gig.
      And it is Olzon, after all, who has to face the brunt of the pressure.
     
“This is one of those places we’d never find our way to otherwise”, says Ewo Pohjola, the chatty Nightwish manager.
      “There are constantly around 50 requests in my mailbox to bring the band for a gig.”
      It is not that Israel has been omitted from tour schedules in the past out of any standoffishness from the band, but the venue is simply too far off the beaten European track to get into the schedules. A bit like Finland for some bands in the past, really.

(...)
     
      All in all, the 3,200-strong Israeli audience gave Nightwish a warm and at times wild reception.
      The new single Amaranth went down well and works very nicely in the live format. It is also interesting that Sahara comes over a great deal better on stage than on the CD.
      The opening part of the 13-minute epic Poet and the Pendulum is very impressive, but the entire piece is a challenge for the concert audience. The same might be said of the concert as a whole, since it ran to around two hours and included 18 tracks.
     
The quieter moments swam rather too deep for comfort, when the audience and the band alike - probably for purely stamina-related reasons - could not keep up the intensity level the whole way through.
      The best reception was given to the old Nightwish hits like Dark Chest of Wonders, which was served up in the third spot. Clearly the bulk of the audience were longstanding fans and they had a good communal singalong with the intro to the old warhorse Ever Dream.
      Of the old numbers, Olzon has put her own stamp best on She is My Sin and Nemo. The slow-burning ballad Sleeping Sun requires the sort of technically pure, even slightly chilly interpretation that Tarja Turunen could bring to it. Olzon’s more happy-clappy style does not really carry the song.
      One of the climaxes of the show was definitely Marco Hietala’s singing on The Islander, a lovely mood piece from the new album.
     
(...)

   
After the show, Finnish heroes from both sides of the footlights met backstage.
      A dozen or so Finnish UNTSO military observers located on the Lebanese border had come into town to meet the band.