Another poetic step in Nightwish evolution

What comes after faith? These symphonic metal superstars still yearn for transcendence

At the heart of the Rational Sheep project is my conviction — decades old — that it’s important for leaders in traditional religious faiths to pay close attention to spiritual “signals” created by talented artists in popular culture.

What is a “signal”? From the overture for this project:

I define this as a single piece of media or popular culture focusing on a subject that is of vital interest to the church. It can be a newspaper article, a single episode of a television show, a compact disc, a movie, a new video, a best-selling book or some other item. The goal is to tune in a single worthy signal, out of the millions the media pour over us every day. Above all, preachers must learn to recognize when the media launch a major invasion into biblical territory.

If that’s a bit wordy for you, try this shorter version:

A “signal” is a piece of mass culture that raises an issue that clergy and the faithful cannot afford to ignore.

This brings me back to Nightwish, one of the world’s most popular bands in a form of music that is often called “symphonic metal.” How popular is Nightwish? If you have a few minutes, wade into this collection of YouTube reactions to a live performance of the classic “Ghost Love Score.” There are hundreds of these reaction videos, with millions of clicks by viewers.

What do we know about the worldview of Tuomas Holopainen, the Nightwish composer and lyricist who is known as the “Mozart of metal”? Early in the band’s history, his work clearly reflected Christian beliefs — which evolved into what he calls a “freethinker” stance. In one concise interview, he stressed that “atheist” and “agnostic” labels are simplistic.

In an earlier Rational Sheep post, I asked readers to parse the secular and sacred signals in a music video for “Noise,” which is kind of a heavy-metal take on Jonathan Haidt themes that ended up in “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.”

Now we have a video (at the top of this post) for the first song from the band’s upcoming album “Yesterwynde,” which will be released this fall. Here are the lyrics, which again focus on evolutionary doctrines — framed in poetic language that grasps for a sense of transcendence and some beautiful vision of the ultimate.

A “symphonic metal” hymn for St. Charles Darwin?

Something from the earth came
Something for the world
Mosaic of broken fragile pieces
Tesserae of the deceased
Born to a novel world

Pre-Chorus:
Endless chain unbroken
Silent clocks rewinding
My song it is for mankind
Embers to the stars

Chorus:
We are their heir, dust on their palm
We are because of a million loves
We're the perfume of the timeless
Last sighs on a dеath bed
Time set for a curious ghost

Livеs lived plain and epic
Of eudaemonia
12 score and 1 chain of lives unending
Welcoming as my offspring
Walks me to the weave

What, pray tell, is “eudaemonia”?

First starters, that isn’t the kind of ethics language that pops up in hard-rock lyrics. Clearly, Holopainen has been on a spiritual search. Here is the Britannica definition:

Eudaimonia, in Aristotelian ethics, the condition of human flourishing or of living well. The conventional English translation of the ancient Greek term, “happiness,” is unfortunate because eudaimonia, as Aristotle and most other ancient philosophers understood it, does not consist of a state of mind or a feeling of pleasure or contentment, as “happiness” (as it is commonly used) implies. For Aristotle, eudaimonia is the highest human good, the only human good that is desirable for its own sake (as an end in itself) rather than for the sake of something else (as a means toward some other end).

What is The Big Idea in this Nightwish anthem?

Does it matter that, in the years ahead, thousands of Nightwish concert pilgrims of various ages will be singing these words at the top of their lungs — with that haunting chorus ringing in their ears?

We are their heir, dust on their palm
We are because of a million loves
We're the perfume of the timeless
Last sighs on a dеath bed
Time set for a curious ghost

Poetic materialism?

If there are pastors and priests with ears to hear, what is happening here? Please remember that Rational Sheep mantra: Right question; wrong answer.

Now, for those who missed earlier posts, here is a brief summary of the media-apologetics process I developed, in the early 1990s, at Denver Seminary with the late Haddon Robinson, a famous teacher of preaching and hermeneutics.

Step one, obviously, is to find a specific media signal, as previously defined.

Step two requires honest, open-minded analysis. We want to find what I call the signal's “secular subject," as the artist would define it. Interviews often contain clues.

Step three mirrors step two. Once you have found this "secular subject,'' it will almost always have moral or theological overtones. It will be a "sacred subject'' that we share in common with saints and sinners down the ages. Stories change. Images change. Questions often sound new and strange. But the "big ideas'' are remarkably constant, because the stuff of human experience is the same.

Step four is the hardest part, because it requires church leaders to think of ways to respond. This does not require a television network or digital equipment. I believe the church must respond by using its strengths — preaching, Christian education, prayer groups, retreats and other traditional forms of ministry.

Always remember that artists — the talented artists worthy of attention — must find ways to address real-life issues or what Rational Sheep will consider “Big Ideas" — life, death, love, hate, money, marriage, sex, fear, children, anger, pride, hatred, war, eternity and so forth.

Once again, let me stress: We are not trying to let the world hijack the church's agenda. We are attempting to take part in debates in which the church cannot afford to remain silent.

We pay close attention because we want to understand and respond.