NIGHTWISH's HIETALA Is 'Really Pleased' With FLOOR JANSEN's Interpretation Of Band's Material

Brendan Crabb of Australia's Loud magazine recently conducted an interview with bassist/vocalist Marco Hietala of Finnish symphonic metallers NIGHTWISH. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Loud: This is your third tour here and you've had a different vocalist in tow on each occasion. How has [Dutch singer] Floor [Jansen] slotted into the band?

Marco: It's been coming together really well. I mean, of course, we knew her from, like, over ten years back when we were doing a tour together. In 2002, AFTER FOREVER was warming up for NIGHTWISH and we've known her since then. We knew that when we had kind of an emergency, she would be one vocalist who would be able to pull it off, and not only that, be able to pull it off fast. And she really did, so she's got my respect as a professional and the way she handled the fast call of the whole thing. She really nailed it down really fast. So it's all for the good.

Loud: She's out there performing material that was obviously written for other vocalists. Do you think she approaches the songs somewhat differently to her predecessors?

Marco: Well, of course, you've got to have room enough for the vocalist to have some kind of an interpretation of her own in the songs. It's just a matter of physics, that some things actually fit some people better. As a singer, I know it myself, that it comes down to little things also, and you've gotta have room enough. But I think she's been able to give quite a nice, personal perspective into the songs that she's doing live now. I'm really pleased with the way she's doing her thing.

Loud: It seems like the band are taking baby steps with the whole process too; taking her on tour and seeing how she fits into the band, without the pressure of having to make a final decision yet.

Marco: Yeah, because this is the thing, that when you need to change vocalists in the middle of the tour, you actually give yourself the luxury of doing just the immediate plans. Like, "Let's do the shows and see how it goes" and really get to know each other backstage, sitting around in the pubs and bars, buses and airplanes and all that. All this is in order to see how we fit together. So that is kind of a luxury that we've never had before, that we can do the shows and everything and then make our decision based on how well we really got along.

Loud: Regarding Anette's [Olzon] departure, I know Tuomas [Holopainen, NIGHTWISH keyboardist/mainman] has been asked in other interviews about it and his response was that the statement the band issued at the time said all that they wanted to tell the public about the split. Did you learn something from the manner in which Tarja [Turunen] left that you applied to the situation with Anette?

Marco: Yeah, we learned that it's probably better if you don't go into too much personal detail, and just let it lie. We agreed that this time we would do it this way in order not to create too much media hassle; which was pretty overwhelming at the time with Tarja, when the split happened with Tarja. Like six months in Finland doing no interviews at all and still the press found something to write every day. So yeah, we wanted to keep it simple this time.

Read the entire interview from Loud magazine.