After a very intense 2 years, NIGHTWISH’s Human Nature World Tour is coming to an end. Maybe by the time you’re reading this, it has already ended. After 2 years of touring the four continents, doing a total of seventy shows, having to postpone the Asian leg of the tour due to Floor Jansen’s radiation therapy as a part of her breast cancer treatment, postponing multiple shows due to the COVID pandemic restrictions in 2021, having to look for a temporary bass player after Marko Hietala’s departure, the band arrived in Vaasa on June 17th, 2023, to play their, as we later learnt, last show of the tour, since Oslo was cancelled. After issuing a statement earlier this year, that the band will be taking a break from touring until further notice and will not be going on tour for the upcoming 2024 album, a lot of fan speculation started regarding the future of the band, a consequence of which was a rush to the ticket selling sites, which resulted in the Kitee show being 98% sold out. Kitee is band founder Tuomas Holopainen‘s hometown and Vaasa is where NIGHTWISH’s drummer, Kai Hahto, is from, hence the choice of the last two Finnish stops on the tour.
The Vaasa concert started with a bang, literally, because right after the band appeared on stage, loud fireworks were set off. They started with the tour classics: “Noise,” followed by “Storytime,” “Tribal,” and “Elan”; a selection of fast-paced songs to get the crowd going. A surprise inclusion in the setlist was that they performed “Our Decades in the Sun,” a very slow, acoustic ballad from the “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” album, which Holopainen wrote in tribute to his parents. On the other hand though, the song shouldn’t be a surprise at all, due to the hometown nature of both Vaasa and Kitee.
Of course, later came the setlist favorites, like “Ghost Love Score,” “Nemo,” and “I Want My Tears Back.” During the latter, there were images as old as 1996 from throughout the band’s history being displayed on the background. The concert ended traditionally with “The Greatest Show on Earth,” with the iconic “We were here” line that roared through the stadium by the power of thousands of people present. During the last song, the band displayed photos of those who aren’t with us anymore, like the late CHILDREN OF BODOM vocalist, Alexi Laiho, and a bunch of other people that I admittedly didn’t recognize.
The performance ended with an outro from “Music,” where the band bowed while Floor sang her parts. It’s worth mentioning that – incredible vocalist that she is – she sang all the most demanding parts without excuses, despite being very pregnant.
And so ended the last NIGHTWISH show in Finland… for the time being, because we’ve been assured by Floor that they will be back. So don’t lose hope, this is not the end, this is just an intermission.
