This is the 80th post in our Musician of the Day series.
Nightwish was formed in 1996 in Finland by Tuomas Holopainen (keyboards, piano,lyrics). He first invited Erno "Emppu" Vuorinen (lead guitar, classical guitar) and Tarja Turunen (vocals) to join his new endeavor. They put together their first demo in the winter of 1996 and ended up naming the band after their very first song. Jukka Nevalainen (drums, percussion) joined the band in 1997.
It was also in 1997 that Nightwish was signed to a label and released their first studio album entitled Angels Fall First. They had their debut and asked Sami Vänskä (bass) to join and take the missing spot as bass player. Though their album was a success they only performed seven times due to the military conscription of two of the members and Tara working on finishing her schooling.
It is quite mad to think that this band were so young when they first had success. Other bands are often older than this, they are at the age where they do things such as drive, play online poker (www.partypoker.com) and various other things, that a band of a younger age could't do.
What a young band does give to the music scene is a fresh perspective, unlike everything else around. This fresh feeling to the band is probably something that really helped them in their rise to success and gave them their initial fan base. Things really went from strength to strength for them at the start.
The next year they released Oceanborn which was an instant success in Finland. The band rose to the top of the charts and the album was certified gold. In 2000 they released their third album Wishmaster which was also a success in Finland.
In 2001 the band began have issues and fights together. This was mainly due to the bass player no longer being dedicated to the band. In order to save the band, Sami Vänskä was asked to leave. Marco Hietala was brought on as his replacement.
Century Child was released in 2002. Just two hours after it hit the shelves it was certified gold, two weeks later it was platinum.
Once was the next album and it was released in 2004. The success of the album led to another world tour in which the band's popularity continued to grow all over the world.
In 2005 Tarja Turunen was dismissed from the band with the reasons being that her husband and commercial interests had changed her attitude in the band. Alyson Avenue was chosen from a number of different vocalists to replace Tarja Turunen.
In 2007, the band released Dark Passion Play. The album was number one in Germany, Finland, Hungary, Croatia, and Switzerland. It reached the top 100 in 16 other countries as well.
Nightwish has become the most successful Finnish band in history and is known all over the world for it's unique brand of music.
To learn more about Nightwish visit their official site or MetalFromFinland.com
