Cav's Place

This came completely out of nowhere, but a press statement posted today announced that Nightwish and Anette Olzon have decided to part ways. The band won’t cancel any of their scheduled concerts, however, as Floor Jansen will take Anette’s place for the remainder of the tour. At the same time, it seems unlikely that she’ll abandon ReVamp in order to become their new vocalist in the long-term, so soon enough I imagine that a new search for a new vocalist will start.

An explanation for the reason why this happened now, in the middle of the tour, can perhaps be pieced together from what both the band and Anette posted about Friday’s concert in Denver. At least as far as I can tell, Anette has these current health problems, which may simply be a bad flu coupled with stress but nevertheless prevent her from performing properly, but more importantly discovered a more serious issue during the tests she had done, so it’s highly uncertain that she’d have been able to keep up with the touring schedule at least in the near future. At the same time, she made it clear that she was unhappy with the fact that the concert in question went ahead while she was in hospital, after the band was able to find temporary replacements almost instantly, so it would appear that she’d have wanted any concerts which she wouldn’t have been able to attend, and these issues mean that there might have been a fair number of those, to be canceled, while the band made it perfectly clear that they have no intention of canceling any of those that have already been scheduled.
On the other hand, while this explanation pieced together from a few blog and Facebook posts may be sufficient for some, the press release quite clearly states that there had been tensions building up for some time, so I’d sure like them to be as open as they were seven years ago and explain exactly when it all started and what’s been going on instead of releasing this text that hints at other issues but is basically devoid of any real explanations or details.

All in all, this opens up some interesting options for their next album, if there will be one, especially since they were already going to wait a long time before it, with Tuomas having already stated that he had a personal project that he really wanted to work on as soon as he’ll find some time. What this means is that they’ll have plenty of time for the new search and perhaps this time they’ll do it better, as in find the new vocalist before writing the songs, to make sure that her voice will fit it better than Anette’s voice fit Dark Passion Play and there won’t be another, shall we say, accommodation album before their next masterpiece.
At the same time, Imaginaerum will be released next month and having the band members as seen at launch, and also during the final and most important stretch of the promotional period, differ from those who recorded the album the film is connected to, and who also appear in the film itself, will certainly be quite a problem, so I’m wondering how they’ll tackle that under the current circumstances.