HUMAN. :ǁ: NATURE.

Economists and social scientists of all stripes utilize various metrics to try to determine the overall health and well-being of a society. And while we can all agree on the importance of GDP per capita and life expectancy as indicators of a society's overall well-being, no one seems to have considered looking at the extent to which progressive metal dominates a society's pop-music landscape as a possible metric. Certainly, a country like Finland that has swapped "Bieber-fever" for Nightwish's glorious symphonic metal has its priorities straight!

Despite relishing the fact that Nightwish is Finland's most commercially successful musical export, I find myself quite a bit less enthusiastic about the group's latest release HUMAN. :II: NATURE.. The album is chock-full of pomp but still manages to feel kind of bland. And while the first disk has enough likeable standard symphonic metal songs for me to have rated this album a 3 out of 5, the second disk's suite of purely symphonic music is underwhelming, to say the least. I would have expected Tuomas Holopainen, Nightwish's keyboardist and songwriter, to be a bit more musically self-aware and avoid producing a mere fantasy-movie- soundtrack-rip-off.