This album has been submitted by a user and is not included in any edition of the book.
Once is the fifth studio album by Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish, released on 7 June 2004 by Spinefarm Records in Finland and Nuclear Blast in the rest of Europe. It is the fifth and last album to feature Tarja Turunen on lead vocals. The album cost nearly €250,000 to make (1,000,000 including the videos), which made it Finland's most expensive recording ever until the release of Nightwish's next album, Dark Passion Play, which cost over €500,000 to produce. As of 2013, Once had sold 2.3 million copies worldwide, becoming Nightwish's most successful album to date. The remastering of the album was released on 6 August 2021. During the first week of its release, Once entered the Finnish, German and Norwegian charts at number one, later topping the European Top 100 Albums chart. It was also the first Nightwish album to chart in the United States, reaching No. 42 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart, and the band's first album to chart in UK, reaching No. 10 on the Rock Chart. In 2005, Once was ranked number 383 in Rock Hard magazine's book The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time. In 2017, it was ranked 89th at Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time".
Very theatrical and dramatic. Superb!
Rating: 7/10 Best songs: Wish I had an angel, Planet hell, Dead gardens
Symphonic metal can be very entertaining. So is this album. The variations in tempo and calm/heavy parts are plenty
Symphonic Metal on its way to become my guilty pleasure. Great compositions, versatile and entertaining
Well... It wasn't for me. But it was really good, interesting not for me, and deserves credit for that!
Not bad. Symphonic metal like this always seems so steeped in strange musical decisions. Why was there a four-on-the-floor disco beat on this album? Many mysteries
Very little of this early-aughts symphonic metal has aged well. Though technically well done (I really enjoyed some of the riffs!), the mish-mash of Iron Maiden guitar, soaring strings, and multi-part vocal harmonies just feels like it's trying way too hard to establish its own importance and justify its own existence. All of this on top of poor mixing – there's little to no bass to be found here and things feel way too trebly and top-heavy as a result
This album did nothing for me.
Symphonic metal, power metal. Ni fu ni fa.
As "Metal" goes, I have to say this comes across a little Disneyfied. I didn't hate it and it is executed with great competence, but too highly polished, any edge sanded a little too thoroughly down.
This is the corniest shit I've ever heard New Sonic soundtrack 2
Painful
Nightwish is the comic con cosplay loser end of heavy metal. It's.... so very middle-class European. I flew Finnair once and the in-flight magazine was basically a Nightwish promo. I don't understand how people could be comfortable with it. It makes me cringe. 2/5.
Nightwish makes metal music for toddlers. It is very simple melodic rock with cliché melodies and dumb lyrics. Symphonic/ Gothic metal is not a musical style I like, but even in this genre there are many better bands (Evanescence, Within Temptation, Epica).