Finnish symphonic-metal juggernaut Nightwish are gearing up to drop their ambitious new double album, Human. :II: Nature, and ahead of the release, they’ve announced a new partnership with the international conservation charity organization World Land Trust. The charity — whose patrons include Sir David Attenborough and Chris Packham — aims to protect the earth’s most biologically significant and threatened habitats, acre by acre. The band has also offered up standout LP cut “Ad Astra” along with its music video, which includes information on World Land Trust and its cause. Watch and listen below.
Human. :II: Nature — the follow-up to 2015’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful — is due out on April 10th via Nuclear Blast, and will include nine tracks on its main disc and one long track, divided into eight chapters, on part two. While Nightwish keyboardist and main songwriter Tuomas Holopainen has said that Human. :II: Nature is not a concept album, he told Germany’s Rock Bottom that it is “a thematic album.” “At some point through the songwriting process, I realized that the word ‘human’ appears in all the songs, and these are all somehow connected,” he explained. “Then I kind of realized that, ‘OK, this song is about the power of human imagination,’ ‘This song is about the power of human empathy,’ ‘This song is all about music descending on mankind,’ ‘This song is about human versus technology.’ So, ‘OK, let’s call this album Human.’ But that doesn’t sound quite right, so the last song, it’s all about the beauty of planet Earth. The last song is kind of like Nightwish’s love letter to planet Earth. So that’s nature — human nature. That’s how we came up with the title of the album.”
