Tarja Turunen - My Winter Storm

Artist : Tarja Turunen (ex-Nightwish)

Album Title : My Winter Storm

Genre : Operatic Metal (or whatever)

Rating : ***** *½ (out of 10*)

This Week I'm Listening To...
Two years after being unceremoniously booted out of the symphonic-metal band, Nightwish, ex-lead-singer Tarja Turunen returns with her debut solo album, My Winter Storm. Ironically, Nighwish also spent two years working on their post-Tarja album, Dark Passion Play, which has been reviewed here, so the release dates are within a couple months of each other. Talk about awkward timing.

What's To Like...
It can't be denied - Tarja has the finest voice in all of Metaldom, and it is spotlighted on MWS. Opera-trained, all the songs here play to her forte.

The studio mixing is superb, which is quite rare for the Metal genre. The featured single from this album, I Walk Alone, is fantastic.

And as with DPP, you get your money's worth of music here - about 75 minutes.

What's Not To Like...
Where's the Metal ?!?! A lot of Tarjaholic MetalHeads are going to be disappointed here. There's only one song - Ciaran's Well - that even attempts to remind you that she used to sing in a Metal band.

While the mixing is excellent, the composing is frankly bland. Hey Tarja, kiss and make up with Tuomas Holopainen, and let him write the songs for your next album. You won't regret it.

Finally, whereas DPP was full of bitterness for Tarja and her husband-cum-business-manager, MWS wallows in self-pity. This was one nasty divorce.

If I Could Anybody I Wanted To Be, I'd Choose...
After two years of preparation, Tarja finally gets to "be herself". And it turns out that she wants to be... Sarah Brightman. Good luck, Tarja. You may have the best pipes in Metal, but SB can sing operatic circles around you. Perhaps you should consider sticking to Metal.

Rating MWS is difficult. A lot of people express their opinion of who's to blame for the Nightwish divorce by either giving this 1* or 10*. That's irrelevant. A lot of others give it a 5* "Average" rating. I assume these are the MetalHeads who were expecting (not unreasonably) a Nightwish-sounding effort. If Tarja persists in going the operatic route, I'm afraid she'll lose a lot of her fan-base.

Ultimately, your opinion of this CD will probably come down to what you think of Sarah Brightman music. If you happen to like SB (I do), then you will find MWS to be an above-average (but not great) album. If SB makes you retch and reach for your Spice Girls' Greatest Hits CD, you might want to pass on MWS. Still, if Tarja ever came to Phoenix, I'd be there in a heartbeat.

P.S...
Ms. Brightman also has a new album out, Symphony, which we'll review after listening to it a few more times.