Nightwish frontwoman Floor Jansen has revealed how a challenging few years has meant that the experience of recording the band's imminent new album Yesterwynde was unlike any other in her career so far. Speaking exclusively to Metal Hammer in their latest issue, Jansen explains that between her well-documented battle with breast cancer and her pregnancy and the birth of her second child with Sabaton drummer Hannes Van Dahl, Floor was suffering was fatigue issues that meant she couldn't be as present for the album's recording sessions as in previous years.
“I was pregnant, and before that there was the cancer, and then I had my baby and I was just really, really fucking tired, so I wasn’t there like I had been in the past,” she says. “The connection to the album is much less than it was before, because we haven’t been spending as much crazy time together as we usually would. That doesn’t mean I don’t give a shit – quite the opposite – but I’m still growing into what it means, and what it means to me.”
An emotionally-charged record that, according to band keyboardist and main songwriter Tuomas Holopainen, "celebrates life and humanity and mortality", Yesterwynde follows a turbulent few years for Nightwish that has included the departure of longtime bassist and backing vocalist Marko Hietala and the band's surprising decision to retire from touring. That turbulence, alongside Floor's own personal journey in recent years, has meant that the singer has taken her time to get to grips with the themes running through Yesterwynde, though she says he is getting a better handle on them now.
“To me, it’s a continuous awareness about the beauty of the planet we’re on and the positivity of us as a species," she suggests. "We get all this negative feedback about killing the planet and hurting each other, and all of that is unfortunately true. But there’s also a lot of beauty to it – humanity has achieved amazing things throughout history, and we should remind ourselves of that. That is sometimes forgotten in the speed of the life we live today.”
Yesterwynde arrives on September 20. You can read more about the album courtesy of Metal Hammer's exclusive interview with Nightwish in their latest issue, out now.
