  
Ok lets start by making one thing clear - despite the title this isn't really a Nightwish album. It's a film soundtrack to the film that Nightwish have made to tie in with their last studio album, Imaginaerum. As such this album is almost completely instrumental.
Still interested? Good, because it's an album that Nightwsh fans are going to want to listen to. Some of my Nightwish loving friends have long described Nightwish keyboard player and writer Tuomas Holopainen as a genius, and I think this album really shows the true scale of his talent. Without conventional songs with a singer then all the debate about who is the best Nightwish vocalist and the relative merits of the various singers Nightwish have had are all forgotten and we're left with the music to focus on.
The tracks on The Score are not just instrumental versions of the songs on Imaginaerum (that was available as a second disc as part of the Imaginaerum album's special edition). Instead what we have here are more like expanded orchestral versions - they use a lot of the same melodies and themes that appear in the main album but as part of something much bigger and more elaborate.
"Deeper down" is the only track to have many vocals, and is effectively a reworked version of the song "The Crow, The Owl And The Dove" from Imaginaerum.
With the other tracks, fans of Imaginaerum will be able to tell from the title which songs most of them correspond to, and when listening to them those themes and melodies from Imaginaerum make it even clearer.
I have to say I was blown away by this release - Imaginaerum is one of my favourite albums to be released in the last couple of years, but I was slghtly sceptical to hear how it would work as a film score. Well I shouldn't have doubted Tuomas Holopainen - after hearing this album I definitely agree he's a musical genius - the orchestrations here are simply superb and the way it's been tied in so well with the songs on the album is fantastic. Normally I might listen to an instrumental album once and never listen to it again, but this is more like a piece of classical music - yes it's instrumental but it stands up to repeated listening.
In the same way that movies such as Lord of the Rings have had magnificent soundtracks with rich orchestral sounds, so too does Imaginaerum - we're yet to see the film being released in the UK but until we get a chance to see it then I'll be listening to the score quite a lot.
A magnificent album
Track listing:
1. Find your story
2. Orphanage airlines
3. Undertow
4. A cracking sphere
5. Sundown
6. Wonderfield
7. Hey buddy
8. Deeper down
9. Dare to enter
10. I have to let you go
11. Heart lying still
12. From G to E minor |
