Tuomas Holopainen - The Life and Times of Scrooge

***1/2
Nightwish Mainman takes a slight left turn on first solo album!

Well one thing you can never say about Tuomas Holopainen is that he is predictable and plays it safe! Although Nightwish are extremely Melodic and are by no means as "Metal" as the Slayer's and Cannibal Corpse's of the World but like it or not they are a Metal band and Metal musicians as a whole don't release soundtracks to graphic novels about Donald Duck's uncle!

The fact he has done this at all deserve's a five star. It also deserves a five star due to it's musical quality. It's massive in scope. Whether there is a visual companion to this I'm not sure. The idea might be to listen while reading the graphic novel of the same title in case your interested or if there is a movie in the works I just don't know, but the album is mainly instrumental and give you the atmosphere of what a movie would be like. There are some beautiful vocals from Johanna Kurkela and there is narrative in parts also. As mentioned earlier is a massive soundscape there's big orchestration, Celtic and Folk music. There's lovely mellow parts that build to big dramatic parts. It's somewhere between something Mike Oldfield would have done and ...well a Disney film score!

It's a big piece of work and a brilliant piece of work and it shows just how talented a musician Tuomas Holopainen is. The question is this - It might be brilliant but is it good? What I mean is as great a piece of work this is how much are you going to listen to it? the answer is not much. You'll listen to it once or twice then it will sit on the shelf. Only the die hard Nightwish fan will really want this. I know it's not a Metal album and one should be broad minded and the rest of it but it has come out on Nuclear Blast and it is being sold as Tuomas Holopainen's solo album!  It could have been released simply as a soundtrack that just happens to be written by Tuomas like plenty of other film scores have been released.

If your interested by all means go for it. It is without question a great achievement but to use a metaphor, we can all agree the soundtrack to Disney's 'Fantasia' is a superb piece of music and a lot of people do in fact own a copy of it, but how often do you actually listen to it? This is the kind of CD that is perfect for your girlfriend or your wife, I know what to get her now for Christmas and maybe even my mum or a relative would like this. Yes it's a perfect present for Birthdays and Christmas' so I would suggest buying this for someone as a gift. 

Review by Joe Denby 

Check Out! the Video for 'A lifetime of Adventure' Below...