One Song – The Poet and the Pendulum [Nightwish]

Track 1 ‘Dark Passion Play’

Written by Tuomas Holopainen

Released 2007

I like long songs. Something that can forge a place for its self and tell a good story. Songs are one of the oldest and best forms of story telling and with ‘The Poet and the Pendulum’ we have one that excels in story and music. It is a piece of audio artwork.

Clocking in at 13:51 it clears the threshold for a long song by by books (7 min) and it uses its time well to deliver the story. The story is broken into five parts; each a different aspect of the story and quite different in style. But before I get into any of that just a quick world on long songs.

The more time that something has to play with can make it better; not having to constrict itself to a short limit just to get air time. I love Iron Maiden for this reason most of their songs are too long for regular radio but it hasn't hurt them at all. Their songs tell the stories they want and use all the time that they need. Nightwish are similar, they have a fair few long songs and with ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ they have the longest song that I own (its a whopping 24 minuets). I like to enjoy my music and a long song I can get my teeth into makes it all the more enjoyable.

The end

The songwriter’s dead

The blade fell upon him

Taking him to the white lands

Of Empathica,

Of Innocence

Part 1: White Lands Of Empathica

What a way to kick off your song! A solo by a young choir boy singing very clearly and beautifully. The song starts off at the end of the story with the dead song writer’s spirit going off into the beyond (Strangely Empathica is a place in the Dark Tower books). This part starts the story and sets up the tone and themes.

It sets up questions, how and why did the song writer die? How did it is come to this? The answers will come in time. The title can suggest the is interesting things going on with time itself. The song doesn't run in a ‘normal’ linier fashion, that much is obvious. It jumps around in the writers life as we see different times. The story point of view swings back and forth.

The music is haunting and the whispers in the background sells the setting of a death bed or a spirit moving on. The voice of an Angel perhaps? The choice of the singer is great and adds even more when he comes back later. This part is less that 90 seconds long and is very much an overture, but the set up is outstanding. Onto the struggle.

The dreamer and the wine

Poet without a rhyme

A widow writer torn apart by chains of Hell

One last perfect verse

It's still the same old song

Oh Christ, how I hate what I have become

Part 2: Home

The tempo shift hits and the song kicks into gear. Back in 2007 if this album was the first you had heard of the new Nightwish then this was your intro to the new lead singer Anette Olzon and boy is she good. She has the range to pull of all the parts of this song from melodic to fast and heavy. She makes the lyrics flow better than just reading them ever can.

Here we come the sensitive part, the man who wrote this song. The song writer of the story and reality share the same name, Tuomas. This song and album is the first since the split with the former singer and a dark period in his life. He has since stated this is the “album that saved his life”. I down want to dive deep into the cross meaning but it is something to keep in mind.

“My home was there and then, those meadows of heaven.” There are moments of joy at the memory of a better time or place but now his life is filled with a struggle to work and to handle his renown. Its just a small line but I think he struggles to live up to his fame and the name he had made for himself. Why can’t he write another perfect verse. He is an artist who has lost his muse and pines for a simpler time at home where all is safe.

Time to talk about that chorus. To me this is his break down. There are struggles, problems and fancy in his life but this keeps coming back. Its interesting to fit the nature of a song into the story, in any other song a chorus can cause a narrative dissonance. but here it is used to show his struggles are the same and they keep coming back. A need to get away, and an insight of his own coping mechanism tangled with his main issue an inability to cope with his life.

The good times of the past only serve to show how deep his current struggles are and it will spiral deeper into despair.

You live long enough to hear the sounds of guns,

Long enough to find yourself screaming every night,

Live long enough to see your friends betray you.

For years I've been strapped unto this altar.

Now I only have three minutes and counting.

I just wish the tide would catch me first and give me

a death I always longed for.

Part 3: The Pacific

Oh boy this bit. The part that makes me reconsider sharing my music choices. Dose it make a difference that it seems to be a metaphor? Nope its still dark and rightfully so. I wouldn't have it any other way. I am not one to cringe away from uncomfortable things but to share it…

This bit is powerful and hits hard. The child's voice packs all the right emotion and makes the impact that much greater. It is something no child should mean to say, and it is used to great effect and sells the state of mind the Poet is in. It is his struggle in his own words. His fear resentment and resignation to his fate.

The pain comes in after what seems like his wish for an easier life; a life of beauty full of poetry and to be a careless as a child one again. It started off so beautify and kind of hopeful, the first three stanzas then give way to the narration and it slides into despair and the brink of death. So calm, so sincere. It makes the shift to the next part a huge blow.

2nd robber to the right of Christ
Cut in half - infanticide
The world will rejoice today
As the crows feast on the rotting poet

Part 4: Dark Passion Play

The is a lot going on here, first off is to work out what is meant by ‘2nd robber to the right of Christ’? At a glance it is referring to the penetant thief but the wording is odd and I think it would make more sense to be about Gestas, the impenitent thief who taunted Jesus. Dose he see himself as Gestas a man worthy of death but who would taunt Jesus? Seems at odd with the line about a face for God but now perhaps all pretences have dropped.

The male vocals are done by Marco and they are great, strong and understandable they bare the emotion of the words well. These are the poets last words as such, they are full of hate for the world and himself. He sees it as something he must do and the line: ‘Slain by the bell, tolling for his farewell’ heavily implies suicide.

All three vocalists have a part in this act; an out burst from the poet, then we are shown the aftermath with an implication that he is not missed and lastly a eulogy. It states the circumstance around his death but with a slip of hope he was at least content in death. But then why is the next line ‘Save me’?

Be still, my son
You`re home
Oh when did you become so cold?
The blade will keep on descending
All you need is to feel my love

 

Part 5: Mother and Farther

Did he find solace in death? Perhaps, but it seems even in the world after you must search it out. Are his parents now there to help and guide him: to find his shore or must it be for him to find? Dose the end of his life lead to a new beginning.

Its an almost damming observation of the Poets nature by his parents if it even if it is his parents. With all the refinances to God is it divine worlds that set him on his path. The blade descending seems to be kept a bay by love and meaning in work

Through all the pain and hate and fear, the song ends in a lighter more optimistic tone. Even through all hardships and the casting off of ties and even life the will always be love if you want it.

The beautiful singing from the start is back, but now it lacks the whispers from the start of the song. It shows the change in his mind set, the is no more harmful thoughts to get in his way.

Get away, run away, fly away
Lead me astray to dreamer's hideaway
I cannot cry 'cause the shoulder cries more
I cannot die, I, a whore for this cold world

The Power in the Song

This is a masterpiece. The story of fear, hate, self loathing, pain and death of one struggling man. It shows us all of the complex issues that can be suffer with in the time where someone want to die. It doesn't end there where the is darkness the is also light and the song gives hope to anyone who looks.

The is other way at looking at things and I could have gone on for so much longer about the meaning of the pendulum the method of death and so on but what I have discussed is the bit that stand out to me. Different people see things in many ways and I don’t even know if this is the writers intentions and I’m not sure I want to know just yet.

The are some key choices in the creation of this song that work to its advantage. The use of the orchestra and choir boy add so much and sells the emotion of the poet and elicits feelings in the listener time after time. Few songs are so daring and it pays of with one of the greatest songs the band has done.

Nightwish are not strangers to darker story's and I may have to take a deeper look at their film sometime. But for now this has been my thoughts on just one of their songs. I hope I have conveyed my thoughts well enough. This has been a long a tricky topic but one well worth thinking over. But that is the nature of a great song, not only do I love to listen to it. I want to understand it.

Search for beauty, find your shore

Try to save them all, bleed no more

You have such oceans within

In the end, I will always love you

The beginning.