Technical simplifications? Fuck you! Maybe try writing more riffs and less unperformable orchestras next time. There is nothing wrong with this method in and of itself, but once it starts to fuck with the old songs is where I get particularly cranky. Unfortunately, Tuomas feels everything needs to revolve around Marco's stupid detuned bass, so most of their modern songs were written in that key. Fuck it to all hell! It's even more infuriating when you realize there's an After Forever cover of the song in it's original key that sounds brilliant.
You're probably thinking that my favorite moment here is She Is My Sin, right? WRONG! Downtuning be damned. It most certainly was a star-making performance for Floor Jansen, and it made the metal world give a shit about Nightwish again (at least until Endless Riffs All Pitiful came out). With Judas Priest it was Rob Halford's interminably long scream at the end of Victim of Changes, Kiss Alive has the definitive version of Rock & Roll All Nite, and No Sleep Til Hammersmith had, well, the first fucking notes of Ace of Spades. Most live albums have a key moment where everything is cinched and you realize this is an all-time great band. Ghost Love Score is particularly remarkable. Again, most of these songs are shit, but Floor Jansen is so fucking good she makes us forget they're shit. Ergo, Hetfield gets replaced with Hansi Kursch. Here we have a singer that's actually capable of delivering all the emotions and nuances required to properly convey metal songs. One critical difference between there and here however, is this album does not have a crappy Waylon Jennings impersonator delivering the lyrics.
You remember how during the end of Newsted's tenure Metallica had an absolutely atrocious setlist riddled with Black Album/Load/Reload tracks with barely a few morsels from the golden days (See also: S&M)? That's pretty much what this is. Let's get this out of the way right now, in and of themselves, most of these songs are sub-standard. Wacken 2013, while not the final show of the tour, was near the end and was a chance to show the world at large whether or not their latest lineup change for the best. As if to make their Tarja firing look like some sort of 21 gun salute send off, Annette Olzon was fired in the middle of a tour.in a foreign fucking country (was it for taking the wrong drugs?)! Her replacement was not just any old female singer, but established metal valkyrie Floor Jansen! Unlike Olzon, Floor was near universally welcomed with open arms by the Nightwish faithful, and had even raised the eyebrows of many ex-fans that had long since written them off. They had managed to sustain and maybe even grow their brand name, but real metal fans had long flocked elsewhere. They released two (three if we're being truly honest) albums that had three or four decent riffs but were altogether just a slightly more whimsical version of Evanescence. In 2012 Nightwish seemed to be content to continue to drown in their ocean of mediocre, ball-less Disney amalgamation that they had eroded themselves into in 2003. "You make me forget that I hate that song!" However, there was one line he spoke to a contestant, which, while still kind of hipster-ish and douchey, very much reflects Showtime Storytime. He spent the entire time being his usual bizarre "I'm way cooler and wittier than everybody else thinks I am" self. If you've ever seen any interviews with the guy it went about as well as you expected. One day, Quentin Tarantino was a special guest judge on American Idol.