Nightwish

Finland's Nightwish emerged in 1996 when keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen assembled the group with the initial goal of crafting acoustic material. He brought in trained opera vocalist Tarja Turunen, then expanded the lineup to a full metal ensemble featuring guitarist Emppo Vuorinen, bassist Sami Vänskä, and drummer Jukka Nevalainen. Their early demos secured a deal with Finnish imprint Spinefarm, which issued the debut album Angels Fall First in late 1997, with a wider European release arriving the next year. The follow-up Oceanborn arrived in late 1998, elevating the band to mainstream prominence at home as it climbed into the Finnish Top Five and yielded three Top Ten singles.

Heavy European touring solidified their position, leading to the 2000 release of their third album Wishmaster. That record topped the Finnish charts while marking the group's first U.S. appearance via Century Media, which also reissued prior material in 2001. Century Child followed in 2002 and achieved major success across Finland and Europe, yet 2004's Once pushed them further by reaching number one in Germany and the European Top 100. Bassist Marco Hietala had by then replaced Sami Vänskä. After the tour supporting Once the band parted ways with Turunen, who later pursued a solo career; in 2005 Swedish singer Anette Olzon took over lead vocals.

Olzon fronted the multi-platinum Dark Passion Play in 2007, whose accompanying tour stretched nearly two years, and she also appeared on the 2011 conceptual release Imaginaerum. The group and Olzon separated midway through the subsequent world tour in 2012. Dutch soprano Floor Jansen, previously of After Forever and ReVamp, stepped in at short notice to finish the remaining shows; her powerful delivery proved an immediate match, prompting the band to make her a permanent member alongside English piper Troy Donockley. The pressures of that transition were later chronicled in the documentary Please Learn the Setlist in 48 Hours. Their first commercial recording with Jansen, the 2013 live album Showtime, Storytime, captured a performance at Wacken Open Air before an audience of 85,000. The eighth studio album Endless Forms Most Beautiful appeared in early 2015, landing on at least ten charts including number 34 on the Billboard 200 and number two on the hard rock chart. An elaborate multimedia tour spanning the next eighteen months included shows at Wembley Stadium, where scientist Richard Dawkins joined them onstage, and Ratina Stadion in Finland; both concerts were documented on the 2016 video package Vehicle of Spirit, accompanied by a separate audio release.

An extended hiatus preceded activities marking the band's twentieth anniversary in 2018. During the break Holopainen formed the folk-influenced trio Auri with his wife, singer and violinist Johanna Kurkela, and Donockley; the project issued a self-titled debut in 2017. Nightwish returned with Decades, a double-length retrospective drawn from eight studio albums plus their earliest demo, which surfaced in March 2018 alongside a twentieth-anniversary world tour that yielded the live set Decades Live in Buenos Aires. In July 2019 Jukka Nevalainen stepped down from the drum stool and Kai Hahto assumed the role, though Nevalainen continued handling band business offstage.

The ninth studio album Human. :||: Nature. arrived in 2020 as a double-length work whose opening disc contained nine new songs and whose second side comprised the eight-part suite "All the Works of Nature Which Adorn the World." Recorded across four studios between August and October 2019, it was mixed by Mikko Karmila and mastered by Mika Jussila at Finnvox Studio. A remastered and expanded edition of Once, augmented with bonus instrumental, demo, and live tracks, appeared in 2021, while 2023 brought the first full physical audio edition, issued by Svart, of the 2001 live album From Wishes to Eternity, originally a limited Finnish release later issued on CD and DVD. Their tenth studio album Yesterwynde followed in September 2024 and topped the U.K. Rock and Metal Albums chart.

An award-winning, best-selling symphonic metal act, Nightwish is fronted by Floor Jansen, their third female vocalist. Recognized as the most successful Finnish band worldwide, they have moved more than nine million records and accumulated more than sixty gold and platinum certifications, among them seven number one studio albums and thirteen chart-topping singles. Although they were not the first goth-influenced metal band to feature a woman at the microphone—the Gathering from the Netherlands, Italy's Lacuna Coil, and Sweden's Therion all came earlier—their rich melodicism, dynamic textures, and theatrical stage presence established a distinctive sound with worldwide reach.