Nightwish's Reviews
Angels Fall First (Average Rating: 8.34 out of 10)
A Warm-Up Album (Rated this album with 4 out of 10)
Reviewed by
firedrake2002
from Clemson, SC United States
I don't consider this to be Nightwish's first album. I consider it to be their warm-up. Compared to Oceanborn and Wishmaster, this CD sounds like nothing so much as an orchestra tuning up before a symphony starts. The first problem is that the songs are almost without exception lyrically moronic. It's almost like Tuomas was sitting in his study, watching HBO, and looking around randomly for song ideas. He saw some Dragonlance book, and wrote Elvenpath, he was watching Stargate, and wrote Tutankhamen, he noticed his Bible and wrote The Carpenter, etc. Of these, Tutankhamen is the worst offender; it takes plot elements from the movie Stargate right down to character names, like they were angling to get into the soundtrack or something. As a warm-up album, however, I guess they didn't feel the need to write original songs.
All but two of the songs are shallow and vapid beyond belief. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that Tarja hasn't yet developed her amazing ability to seamlessly squeeze long words into places they really shouldn't fit, and it shows. The worst offense, however, is Tuomas singing. He might be able to make it on his own, but next to Tarja he may as well be Rob Halford singing with The Three Tenors. It's an obnoxious, grating distraction from Nightwish's main draw. He completely ruins one of the two passable songs on the CD, Astral Romance, just when I thought I'd finally found a song with decent lyrics and no male co-singing. Keep Tuomas, and anyone other than Tarja for that matter, as far away from the microphone as possible. The only bright spot on this album, and as far as I can tell the only reason they were able to make a second (and thank goodness for that), is Lappi. Although, since most of it isn't in English, it might just as well be as lyrically shallow as the rest of them, but I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt; the entire song is absolutely gorgeous. In conclusion: Skip it. Oceanborn is ten times better, and Wishmaster is 12 times better. This should be kept as a sort of museum piece, so you can honestly say you "have every CD Nightwish ever made", rather than as something to actually listen to.
Buy this album on Amazon at $14.99
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