“Dark Passion Play” wass one of the most expected metal albums for 2007. The split of Nightwish with Tarja, the long waiting for the name of her substitute and the late release of the CD almost drove the fans mad. The new singer, Anette, impressed surprisingly quick with her lack of qualities, which are for sure needed if you want to be part of a band like Nightwish. The samples with her singing that were uploaded months ago on the Internet disappointed many. For our regret, the whole “Dark Passion Play” confirms the low spirits. The first thing that makes impression is the long playing time of the songs. The opener “The Poet and the Pendulum” is surprisingly long, varied and complex. It becomes clear that the new singer gets solid help from her new colleague Marco Hietala. This is one of the best things here. Although the prognoses that the bassist will take the role of a frontman were not quite right, his job here is well done and is the only thing in “Dark Passion Play” that surprises pleasantly. Every time we talk about this album we can’t miss the theme about the new girl in the band, no matter how hard we try to measure the quality of the music without having in mind her weak performance. Her voice is infirm and monotonous, which automatically grabs the attention and you can hardly disregard these obvious lacks. But let’s talk again about the songs… “The Poet and the Pendulum” is a strange choice for a beginning. With its length and orchestral ornaments it can easily disappoint and bore you. On other hand, I can not deny that the next ones, “Bye Bye Beautiful” and “Amaranth”, are among the best songs on “Dark Passion Play”. This is not because they are complicated or interesting, on the contrary - they are simplified the most, but have nice choruses and grabbing melodies. Like in the other songs, Marco’s singing saves the situation from being totally hopeless. The serial drawbacks are the hackneyed formulas of the riffs and the chords that can be heard in the whole record. We can’t be satisfied with such kind of content after all the time spent by Nightwish in the studio. Almost everywhere the epic orchestrations make leave the impression that you’re listening to a soundtrack to a new movie, not to the long-awaited metal album of your favorite band. This is the place where I should mark the presence of song like “Master Passion Greed”, which - with its original plan - puts some points up in the album’s rating. Until its end, however, we should pass through more trials - from the boring acoustic “The Islander” to the full of clichés “Meadows of Heaven”. Here and there are some great guitar solos or melodies played by unusual instruments for Nightwish’s music, but they are not many and do not change the main audio-appearance of the CD. After all of this the conclusion is logical. The album is disappointing - not only for the band’s fans, but for the metal scene in general. It shows what you should not do if you don’t want to fall down. Nightwish discredited themselves with the chosen singer, the unnecessary delay of releasing the new songs, and did not live up the expectations. I can’t imagine what should happen to clean this shame off their faces. Actually, I’ll be happy if Marco decides to stay with his project Tarot only...