Nightwish’s latest, Yesterwynde, finally landed on my doormat yesterday, a rare delay from Amazon.

I still buy CDs, and while I sometimes stream music (if working and not working at home, mainly), I still like physical media the best, and I’ll reluctantly buy digital downloads, but I like having media, so while the release was last Friday, I had to wait, like the sad old Gen-Xer I am.

Paradoxically, the first thing that happened was the CD went into the computer to get ripped. FLACs for home and phone, MP3s for the car, but if I fuck up my music again, even if Google Drive fails me, I have media, and if my chosen music falls foul of a streaming licence, I still have it.

As is the way these days, the album has been heavily teased on Youtube, which led me to pre-order back in April.

The album itself? Well, if certain people hear it they’ll shake their head and say how I rubbish prog, because despite the symphonic metal base it’s, well, proggy. It’s concept album territory here, even though there’s a couple of tracks that stand out as singles (like Perfume of the Timeless). This shouldn’t be a surprise given previous work- the album is stated to form a trilogy with Endless Forms Most Beautiful and Human||Nature.

Smooth, polished production, Floor Jansen’s vocals- not as operatic as earlier Nightwish with Tarja, not as outwardly rocky as Annette Olzon, but magnificent. You’re not going to have to be as keen as I am on symphonic metal to like this.