NIGHTWISH Drummer: 'I'm Extremely Confident For The Future'

NIGHTWISH drummer Jukka "Julius" Nevalainen recently answered a number of fans' questions via the band's official web site. A few excerpts from the question-and-answer session follow:

Q: NIGHTWISH has probably received hundreds or thousands of demos from vocalists. Who can listen to ALL the demos? Is there a hired person to throw worst demos away and send only the somewhat good ones to bandmembers?

Jukka: "There has been even more candidates than we thought there would. But each demo has been, and will be, checked out by at least one of the band members. And all the potential demos have been, and will be, listened by all the band members. There already has been some really good choices for the new singer but we take our time before making the final decision, since there are more demos coming each day and we're not in a hurry at all."

Q: Jukka...what are your expectations for the new NIGHTWISH?

Jukka: "I'm extremely confident for the future. I already know we're going to make the best NIGHTWISH album ever. Of course, we still need to find a new singer but since there has already been a few great demos I'm sure we'll find her and also vocals will be awesome. And nowadays planning future is so much easier and we don't need to argue over all the little stupid things so I'm happy."

Q: How much is the style of NIGHTWISH's music going to change on next album? When are you starting to make it?

Jukka: "Two weeks ago I got a first demo from 15 new songs. We'll start to rehearse and arrange them in June. A new demo will be recorded in July and recordings of the actual album will start in September. All the studios for the recordings have already been booked, also the orchestra, so we're already quite far in the process of making a new album. It's a bit early to say anything certain regarding the style of the new music but it seems that there's not going to be any big changes. Of course there always needs to be some little new things to keep it interesting but the 'direction' we found already on 'Once' seems to be still there."

Q: How would you like the new singer of NIGHTWISH to be?

Jukka: "It would be great to find a singer who has natural-sounding voice but who still would be able to nail all the high notes. By natural sounding voice I mean that in her voice there wouldn't be a recognizable mark of a classical training. This is quite a challenge but you can always hope."

Read the entire question-and-answer session at this location.