Tuomas Holopainen reflects on 30 years of Nightwish

On October 15, 2026 it was announced that Nightwish had parted ways with vocalist Floor Jansen after 13 years. In statements released by both Floor and the group, they described the split as “a mutual decision”. At the time of writing, both parties and unavailable for comment.

Earlier this summer Hammer flew out to Finland to spend time with founder Tuomas Holopainen in the band’s birthplace of Kitee to discuss 30 years of Nightwish history and what the future might look like.

On June 16, 2023, Nightwish played the best gig of their lives. That’s how founder and keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen sees it, anyway. Looking out at a sold-out crowd at Kitee’s Rantakenttä baseball stadium, he recognised more faces than usual – friends, cousins, siblings, fans who’d travelled across the world. This was the first time Nightwish had played in their hometown in almost 20 years and, for Tuomas, it felt like he’d come full circle.

“When we got onstage, I could almost see the studio building where we’d recorded our very first demo,” he says now. “I remembered being there almost 30 years before, now I’m playing to 11,000 people. I still get shivers just thinking about it. What a journey!”

Several songs from the Kitee gig appear on a new live compilation, The Greatest 30 Years On Earth, released in December to coincide with Nightwish’s 30th anniversary. Since forming in this small rural town in 1996, the band have risen to become their country’s biggest musical export and one of the defining groups of the 21st century, doing more than anyone to shape the modern symphonic metal movement.

Despite everything he’s achieved, Tuomas still lives here in Kitee. He isn’t just its most famous son, he’s its biggest cheerleader. So much so that he’s agreed to give Hammer a tour of his birthplace. It’s clear that Tuomas Holopainen loves Kitee. And Kitee loves Tuomas Holopainen back.

“What brings you here?” asks the taxi driver who collects us from the local train station. We’re here to write a piece about Nightwish, we explain.

“Ah, you’ll be seeing Tuomas then,” she says. “Tell him I said hello.”

“I know her,” Tuomas says with a chuckle, when we meet him for our tour the next day. “I mean, there’s, like, three taxi drivers out here. It’s a small town.”

To understand just how remarkable Nightwish’s rise has been, you first have to understand just how remote Kitee is. A four-hour-plus train ride away from Helsinki, civilisation drops away and we’re treated to the sights of Finland’s rugged wilderness. Trees. Trees. More trees. A lake. More trees.

With a population of fewer than 10,000 and one main road, Kitee is more like a glorified waystation than a town in the traditional sense. But Tuomas insists he’s never been tempted to up sticks for the bright lights of the big city.

“Never,” he says proudly. “I’ve always been a country boy. I just love this town because I know everybody and everybody knows me, so I get this peace and solitude. It’s a safe haven.”

It’s appropriate that he’s acting as our tour guide today. One of his first jobs as a teenager was showing people around the local Lutheran church. His grandfather served as pastor there before Tuomas was born, and the Nightwish man can trace his mother’s family line back to 16th-century religious reformist Martin Luther himself. The young Tuomas preferred fantasy novels and movies to scripture, and he still holds the fantastical close to his heart today. The otherwise unassuming car he picks us up in for our tour of the town is nicknamed ‘Gryffindor’. “The licence plate says ‘GRF’,” he says sheepishly, adding that there’s a large Harry Potter flag in the boot.

Encouraged into music by his mother, he learned piano and later played clarinet and the saxophone in his school’s classical and jazz groups. It was there that he met future Nightwish guitarist Emppu Vuorinen and singer Tarja Turunen. On July 6, 1996, when he was 19, Tuomas invited the pair to his parents’ cabin on an island in nearby Lake Pyhäjärvi to create a new band. Sitting around a campfire, he shared songs he’d written while doing his national service in the Finnish army. It was the moment Nightwish were born.

“In the guestbook, you can find the inscription saying that a band had formed that day,” Tuomas says. “It doesn’t say ‘Nightwish’, but it says we were there.”

He bought the island home from his parents a few years ago, and goes there a few times a year to write lyrics.

“There’s no electricity or running water, it’s very primal,” he says. “That’s why I like it. It’s very solitary and peaceful. There’s something about being on an island – you can’t just walk away.”

(Image credit: John McMurtrie)

Kitee was once the moonshine capital of Finland, famous for its illicit hooch. Today, one of its biggest attractions is the permanent Nightwish exhibition, opened in 2020 to celebrate the band. Inside sits 30 years’ worth of memorabilia. The exhibition doesn’t just tell the story of the band, it charts Tuomas’s own journey too.

In one room, we spot a photo showing him with neat short hair and a crisp white shirt, looking every inch the nerdy schoolboy. This was before he took a destiny-changing student exchange trip to the US, where he was taken to a Metallica gig. Soon after returning to Finland, he joined local goth/doom band Dismal Silence.

“I loved it immediately,” he says. “Being with your mates, playing every night and arranging your own songs. That all happened in the fall of 1993. Ever since, I’ve been in bands: Dismal Silence, then Darkwoods My Betrothed, Nattvindens Gråt and then Nightwish.”

Nattvindens Gråt gave Tuomas his first experience of touring, when they supported Dutch goth-metal band Wish in the summer of 1996.

“We played in Hamburg and there was literally one guy there,” says Tuomas. “He left after two songs. We did 10 shows in 10 days, and the biggest attendance at any of those shows was 70 people.”

Just up the road from the Nightwish exhibition, and directly opposite the baseball stadium, sits the studio where Nightwish recorded their first four albums. It also served as a hangout for Tuomas and his friends, and anyone else who wanted to come along.

“The amount of cigarettes and booze consumed here must be astronomical,” he says.

The studio was also where Nightwish played their first ever show, on New Year’s Eve 1997. Their debut album, Angels Fall First, had been released a couple of months earlier and reached No.5 in the Finnish charts. After being offered the chance to go on tour, the band decided to test the water with a hometown show.

“I was so scared I thought I was going to die,” Tuomas admits. “I think I vomited before the show. I’d played shows before, but I was just the keyboardist in those bands, I wasn’t responsible for those songs. Nightwish was my baby, I was like, ‘I can’t fucking do this!’”

As it turned out, they could. Playing for 30 minutes in front of 250 people, the band had a blast.

“We got so drunk that none of us made it home,” Tuomas recalls. “We all slept on the floor side-by-side.”

(Image credit: Press/Nuclear Blast)

In early 1998, the band went out on their first full tour, playing with fellow Finns Children Of Bodom. “We clicked immediately,” Tuomas recalls. “I became friends with Alexi [Laiho, late CoB frontman] right away. Four years later we went to Disneyland Florida with him. We were just two kids who loved the same things – music and Disney theme parks. We were close right up until he died.”

The success of Angels Fall First made it clear to Tuomas that it was decision time for Nightwish: they had to dedicate everything to the band or risk it falling apart.

“I spoke to Tarja and Emppu about what ambitions they had,” he recalls. “It was like, ‘Let’s see how this goes for a few years. See how far we can get.’ We got pretty far.”

The band’s second album, 1998’s Oceanborn, was another step up. The track Sacrament Of Wilderness gave the band their first No.1 single in Finland. Tuomas had taken a job as a supply teacher, and was at work when he found out it had topped the charts.

“I was calling everybody else up to share the news,” he says. “It was up against Madonna and Guns N’ Roses!”

The band got their first No.1 album with 2000’s Wishmaster. The same year, they ill-advisedly took part in a competition to become Finland’s entry in the international cheese-fest the Eurovision Song Contest, coming third (“Entirely my idea, everyone else was against it,” concedes Tuomas). More successful was their very first tour of Latin America.

“The response was like we were the Rolling Stones,” Tuomas says. “It felt great to see people going crazy over stuff I’d created in my parents’ house.”

When Tuomas was young, he used to play baseball at Rantakenttä. He still loves the sport, but admits he had to hang up his mitt because he “wasn’t a team player”. When we point out there are at least a couple of people who’ve left Nightwish’s ranks who might agree, he laughs it off.

For all the successes the band have enjoyed, things haven’t always been sunny. In 2001, just as they were picking up serious steam, tensions rose with then-bassist Sami Vänskä to the point where Tuomas seriously considered ending the band altogether.

“Sami’s heart just wasn’t in it anymore,” Tuomas says. “We’re still friends now and there’s no bad blood, but we realised that to stay friends he needed to leave. Then Marko [Hietala, bassist and co-vocalist] joined, of course.”

Four years later, there was even more turbulence. The band’s 2004 album, Once, had kicked things to another level for them, not least in the UK and America. But problems were brewing with Tarja Turunen.

“I loved the first half of the Once [Upon A] Tour,” Tuomas says. “Then all hell broke loose in 2005, which was the darkest period of the band.”

He’s referring, of course, to the night of October 21, 2005, when, immediately after the final show of the Once Upon A Tour in Helsinki, the band delivered a letter to Tarja accusing her of putting her solo career above Nightwish and telling her she was fired from the band. After the letter was published online, an ugly media storm broke out. Even the country’s then-Prime Minister was asked to comment on the split in Parliament.

“We get blamed for what happened, for good reason,” says Tuomas. “But there was no future for us together. We were just operating in survival mode and plagued by these dark thoughts. We got completely butchered in the media – it was like we were these evil neanderthals who’d hurt our wonderful ex-singer. I got some really interesting letters, let’s put it that way.”

Tarja and Tuomas have exchanged a few emails in recent years, but Tuomas says that’s as close as they’re likely to get to repairing their relationship.

“It was a divorce, and an ugly one at that, so I think we have our own lives now,” he says. “Someone did say to me if we got Tarja and Marko [Hietala, who left in 2020] back in, we could tour just South America for a year straight. That’s not gonna happen.”

After Tarja’s dismissal, Nightwish found a replacement in Anette Olzon, who joined the band in May 2007. According to Tuomas, she was one of 2,200 candidates who applied for the job.

“We’d already recorded [the music for] the album [2007’s Dark Passion Play], so it was a bit like, ‘The deadline is approaching,’” he says. “None of the 2,200 candidates was immediately spot-on, but Anette was the best of what we had. Her voice was so refreshing to all of us, we loved her interpretations of the songs.”

The split with Tarja didn’t halt Nightwish’s rise. Dark Passion Play and 2011’s Imaginaerum continued their hot streak, with the latter giving them their first US Top 30 album. Memorably, they played in China for the first time in 2008. Tuomas says the authorities banned them from throwing plectrums into the audience in case fans stood up during the show.

But more upheaval came in 2012 when Anette left the band in controversial circumstances midway through a US tour. She had publicly voiced her displeasure at being temporarily replaced by Arch Enemy’s Alissa White-Gluz and Elize Ryd of Amaranthe at a gig in Denver when she was too ill to perform. Anette subsequently contested that she’d been fired because she was pregnant and could not tour extensively – something the band denied.

Tuomas won’t go into specifics today, but does hint at some regrets about the period.

“It’s so easy to think, ‘We must strike while the iron is hot’, but you have to know your limits,” Tuomas says now. “When Anette joined the band, we started the Dark Passion Play tour, which lasted for two years and 250 shows. We did four American tours on that record alone, just constant touring, and the result is what it was. A silly thing to do.”

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We stop for lunch at a local pizzeria, where we’re greeted by a massive portrait of the band from the Once era. With his long dark hair and gothic clothes, the Tuomas in the painting looks like he’s trying to be Peter Steele.

“Back then I was obsessed with darkness,” he says, looking at the picture with mild embarrassment. “I grew out of it, I’ve changed a lot, personality-wise.”

Certainly, the last decade or so seems to have been more stable for Nightwish, at least when it comes to singers. Former After Forever singer Floor Jansen replaced Anette Olzon as interim vocalist for the remaining dates on the Imaginaerum tour, before joining as a full-time member in 2013.

The eventual departure of longtime drummer Jukka Nevalainen in 2019 after stepping away from touring five years earlier was amicable (he would ultimately be replaced by Kai Hahto). But Nightwish’s world was rocked once more in the midst of the pandemic, when Marko Hietala dropped a bombshell and announced that he was leaving, citing mental health issues.

“I was gutted,” Tuomas says. “We all knew he’d got his problems with depression. But he called me in December [2020] just saying, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m too sick – I need to do something else.’ My initial reaction was laughter – surely it wasn’t happening again. I called Emppu, and he said, ‘Maybe we should quit.’ I agreed.”

However, getting new bassist Jukka Koskinen onboard was a turning point. “Sure enough, everything worked. The sun started to shine again. That’s what this band does: it keeps surviving,” he says, adding that he and Marko are still on good terms.

Even then, the drama wasn’t over. Floor Jansen was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022 (her treatment was, thankfully, successful). The following year, a shock announcement that the band wouldn’t be touring “for the foreseeable future” set alarm bells ringing among fans.

As we speak, that memorable hometown show at Kitee’s baseball stadium was their last-but-one gig. Reflecting on the decision today, Tuomas insists that it was critical to the band’s survival – he was burned out and concerned about his wellbeing.

“I reached a point where I felt that I couldn’t do it anymore,” he explains. “There’s so much shit that goes on when you’re on tour and I’m slightly traumatised. I told the band they could go on without me, but they wouldn’t have it. Other members of the band said, ‘No, we need a break.’ If we’d continued as we were, people were gonna die.”

Being off the road hasn’t hurt their career. 2024’s Yesterwynde continued their chart-topping streak in Finland and gave them their second UK Top 20 album following 2015’s grandiose Endless Forms Most Beautiful.

“Nightwish has always been more than the sum of its parts,” Tuomas says bullishly. “I honestly think at this point, if any member – including myself – left, the rest of them could continue. Any of us. Because we have evidence enough that this band can work with any combo.”

Tuomas’s home sits a little way out of Kitee itself. From the outside at least, it exudes a very fitting Addams Family vibe, as well as an air of solitude that seems to suit a man who values his privacy. A jetty juts out on the serene water of a lake. Tuomas often relaxes in his sauna before sitting on the jetty to write lyrics and reflect. He’s had plenty of time to do the latter recently.

“That’s why we’re on a break right now,” he says. “We’ve been in the same job for 30 years – we can take a vacation. I love having the time to read, and take a long walk. But I also don’t want to do that for the rest of my life.”

He’s getting itchy feet. In July, he played a few Finnish shows with Auri, the folk project he formed with his wife, Johanna Kurkela, and Nightwish multi-instrumentalist/ co-vocalist Troy Donockley. Tuomas is also working on his second solo album, with plans to record the final parts later this year. After that, he’s planning to properly start work on the next Nightwish album.

“I got my health back, I feel more inspired than ever – proof of that is that I’ve already got six new Nightwish songs done,” he says. “Every time I sit in front of my keyboard, I’m like, ‘Ah yeah this is great! Just wait till everyone hears this.’ It’s exhilarating. Next year is too early to be going back on tour. The year after, possibly? I want to do another album before any live shows, and that’s definitely happening. We’ve already reserved things for that next year.”

The upcoming The Greatest 30 Years On Earth compilation is both proof that rumours of Nightwish’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, and a celebration of the ongoing legacy of the band Tuomas formed in this tiny town all those years ago that has defined his life ever since.

“This stuff will live on for 100 years after I’m dead,” he says. “I wouldn’t have met my wife without Nightwish. It’s brought all the best and worst things into my life, but the good far exceeds the bad.”

The 30 Greatest Years On Earth is out December 11 via Nuclear Blast.

Tuomas Holopainen offers a tour of the Nightwish exhibit at his local museumJohn McMurtrieTuomas’s first job was as a tour guide at the local churchJohn McMurtrieTuomas stands outside the building that hosted Nightwish’s first gig – and where they recorded their first albumsJohn McMurtrieTuomas at the Nightwish museum exhibitJohn McMurtrieTuomas says he used to play baseball as a kid but stopped because he “wasn’t a team player”John McMurtrieTuomas can trace his family lineage back to Martin LutherJohn McMurtrieTuomas says Nightwish’s gig at his local stadium is the best the band ever playedJohn McMurtrieNightwish’s first cover with Floor JansenJohn McMurtrieJohn McMurtrieJohn McMurtrieA collection of early demos and tapes for Nightwish’s first recordingsJohn McMurtrieTuomas has fond memories of meeting Iron Maiden’s Steve HarrisJohn McMurtrieNightwish played their first live show here on December 31 1997John McMurtrieJohn McMurtrieJohn McMurtrieJohn McMurtrie
(LouderSound)