NIGHTWISH: A Day On The Kart Track

Finnish/Swedish symphonic metallers NIGHTWISH recently spent a day on the kart track with Heikki Johannes Kovalainen (see video below), a Finnish Formula One racing driver who spent the 2008 and 2009 seasons with Britain-based team Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, and who drives for the new Lotus Racing team for the 2010 campaign.

NIGHTWISH recently completed work on demo recording of the songs that will appear on the group's next studio album. The pre-production sessions for the new CD took place in "the deepest countryside of Finland," where most of the band spent several weeks finalizing the song arrangements and recording their instrumental parts. The actual recording process for NIGHTWISH's follow-up to 2007's "Dark Passion Play" is slated to begin on October 15 for a late 2011 release.

On July 30, NIGHTWISH singer Anette Olzon gave birth to her second child (and first with her current boyfriend, bassist Johan Husgafvel of the Swedish metal band PAIN). He was 52 centimeters tall and he weighed in at 3930 grams. Olzon, 39, also has a nine-year-old son, Seth, with her now-ex-husband.

NIGHTWISH played a special homecoming show in September 2009 at the sold-out, 11,000-capacity Hartwall Arena in Helsinki to mark the end of the band's colossal "Dark Passion Play" two-year world tour.

NIGHTWISH is not expected to play any more concerts until the release of the band's next studio album.
 

Karting with Nightwish and Heikki Kovalainen from Heikki Kovalainen on Vimeo.