1997-98: Interviews promoting Angels Fall First

[Fugazi]

One of the earliest available NW interviews, by Hannu Jarva, published on December 11, 1997. From Karjalainen, a Finnish newspaper based in Joensuu.

Source: http://nightwishtaikatalvi.epizy.com/article36.html for the original text and Once Upon A Nightwish (Mape Ollila) for a partial English translation. The mistakes are mine and Google Translator's.

Nightwish's Record An Incredible Success

Kitee has hitherto been well known for its typical Finnish hobbies. They've been playing baseball and distilling moonshine. Exporting both hobbies abroad has been very difficult. But don't worry, Kitee will go international, too. It simply happens like this: Tuomas Holopainen - a student of environmental sciences who hates baseball, who has moved to Kuopio, is innovating with an eye for international fame.
He started writing English-language music, forming a band, recording a demo, playing it to a Finnish record executive, and everything was settled. On to record an album.

Praise Once and for all

Nightwish's past is even stranger. Nightwish, a Kitee-based mood metal band, hasn't performed a single gig in its year-long history, but when it released a record in November, the album was an incredible success. The stores ran out of records. - I'm sorry they made so few copies of the disc. Tuomas Holopainen regrets the error of judgment.

Now, however, the situation is improving. More copies of the album of the first charting musicians in Kitee's history will be released as soon as possible. At the same time, we will also see how large sales volumes are being made from the Eastern border.
The first album "Angels Fall First," praised from Earth to Heaven, has been exported to Sweden and Germany. In Finland, the album ended with a handshake and the chipped single Carpenter has been rocking for seven weeks on the Finnish singles chart.

Acoustic Start

The band's songwriter and keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen is rightly satisfied. The impulse of Thomas, who is playing in another metal band in Kitee, Nattvindens Grat, also gave rise to the basic idea.
- Nattvindens Grat was not enough for me. It didn't have enough room to move. I wanted to do something of my own. I wanted to play my own songs, Tuomas Holopainen sums up the beginnings of his idea just over a year ago.
First, Holopainen gathered a small acoustically playing group around him, which included guitarist Emppu Vuorinen and Tarja Turunen, who is studying to become an opera singer at the Sibelius Academy.
In the band, the guitar didn't play with an edge and the drums didn't bang. Nevertheless, the trio made a three-song demo and tested the ice.
- The record companies were not very enthusiastic, even though there was positive feedback. The companies interpreted our music as too marginal.

But the hunger grew when I ate. Nightwish continued to fight for existence and acceptation. Drummer Jukka Nevalainen joined us, and the line became the most heinth.
Tuomas Holopainen wrote three new songs and then played a new demo to Spinefarm Records management during a Nattvindens tour in Germany, and the path was clear.
- Then it all exploded. The reception of the album has been absolutely incredible. It's even been praised as the best record of the year. The feedback has been so positive that it can no longer be any more positive," says Tuomas Holopainen, who is enthusiastic.

Listeners' enthusiasm for Nightwish's harmonious heavy metal is understandable, there is hardly another equally exotic band on the planet that combines operatic singing with heavy music quite as successfully.
"It's a unique thing," Tuomas Holopainen admits.

Straight to the studio

Nightwish appeared in the limelight as if out of nowhere. To this day, it has not stepped in front of the audience, even if there is demand.
- There have already been requests for performances for next summer's festivals: The Province, Ilosaarirock and Nummirock. If there's any rehearsal time, and why can't we, we'll go to the festival. The whooping for gigs is tough.
However, Nightwish will make its actual debut on New Year's Eve in his hometown of Kitee.
"It shows how the band works live," says Tuomas Holopainen.
Nightwish's speed doesn't take a turn. Even though the first album just saw the light of day, one new record of new music has already been created.
- There is plenty of material in the pile. After the New Year, we go to work out, we go to the studio in the summer and the second album is probably ready by the end of the summer," Tuomas Holopainen says of Nightwish's future.
The fact that the band is very scattered all over Finland, Tarja and Tuomas live in Kuopio, Jukka Nevalainen is in the army and Emppu Vuorinen also navigates the greys of the army in January.

 

[Fugazi]

Here's an early interview on Finnish TV where Tarja and Tuomas tell about how AFF was received. It's not groundbreaking content, but just good fun to see them so young and (as Tuomas would probably put it) innocent.

20 May 1998