NIGHTWISH Begins Recording New Album

Finnish/Swedish symphonic metallers NIGHTWISH have officially started recording the follow-up to 2007's "Dark Passion Play". Drummer Jukka Nevalainen writes on the band's official web site, "After spending an intensive summer camp on Finnish countryside and putting a final touch to [a pre-production/demo recording of all the songs that will be featured on the CD], we started recording the drums for our next album. We gathered together [on Thursday, October 14] and set up the drums and all the recording devices. [Friday, October 15] was mostly spent just perfecting the sounds. Just like with our last album we got some back-up from Mr. Kai Hahto (SWALLOW THE SUN and WINTERSUN), who is known to be able to conjure godly sounds by tuning the drums. The legendary duet of Mikko Karmila and TeeCee Kinnunen are taking care of the engineering again. [Friday night] ended with a complete take of the first song, so the recording session has now officially started!"

Check out photos from the studio at this location.

The pre-production sessions for the new NIGHTWISH CD took place in "the deepest countryside of Finland," where most of the band spent several weeks finalizing the song arrangements and recording their instrumental parts.

On July 30, NIGHTWISH singer Anette Olzon gave birth to her second child (and first with her current boyfriend, bassist Johan Husgafvel of the Swedish metal band PAIN). He was 52 centimeters tall and he weighed in at 3930 grams. Olzon, 39, also has a nine-year-old son, Seth, with her now-ex-husband.

NIGHTWISH played a special homecoming show in September 2009 at the sold-out, 11,000-capacity Hartwall Arena in Helsinki to mark the end of the band's colossal "Dark Passion Play" two-year world tour.

NIGHTWISH is not expected to play any more concerts until the release of the band's next studio album.