MARKO HIETALA – Roses From The Deep – review

MARKO HIETALA – Roses From The Deep – review
Nuclear Blast

Well now, this is a tricky one, this is. After all, it’s Marko. Long time favourite of mine, whose solo album, “Mustan Sydämen Rovio” remains a regular play. Even if I did have to buy it twice. Dirty, banditing English language version.

But that was six, long years ago. Of course, he left Nightwish during that period but still. That’s a long time between releases. Granted, he’s done a few special guest slots on other peoples records, appeared on a couple of TV series and, most surprisingly, patched things up with Tarja Turunen.

The modern world being what it is, I’ve already heard half the tracks here, as they’ve had videos released over the last 12 months. Which, for me, takes away a lot of the anticipation. I understand that you’ve got to get publicity but the album listening experience definitely suffers.

It also doesn’t help that the album starts with ‘Frankenstein’s Wife’, a song I could happily never hear again, after it was released last September. Ugh. A terrible song. But then we get the duet with Tarja from March 2024, ‘Left On Mars’. That remains a great song. However, neither ‘Proud Whore’ nor ‘Two Soldiers’ make much of an impression. Decent heavy rock, they’re OK but nothing special.

Unlike ‘The Dragon Must Die’ which is an absolute beast of a tune. It’s the album highlight, by a long way, which is probably just as well, seeing as it unfolds over eight minutes. It’s everything you want from a Marko song, heavy but with proggy overtones, hints of his symphonic past, and a great vocal. The remainder of the album doesn’t live up to that. For some reason, the single ‘Impatient Zero’ appears twice. In it’s full and edited version. Pointless. Out of the five tracks which come after ‘Dragon …’, it’s probably only the title track that has you hitting repeat.

Am I glad this album exists? Yes. Is it anywhere near “Pyre of the Black Heart”? No. That was, easily, an 8 out of 10, this is maybe, if I’m being generous, because it’s Marko, a qualified 7.