My updated ranking of all 10 Nightwish albums

About two and a half years ago, I posted my personal ranking of every Nightwish album. Since that post, we’ve had a new album released, I’ve re-listened to the whole discography several times over, and some of my tastes have changed. I figured I might as well go ahead and post an updated ranking for the three people who may be interested. We’ll be starting from my least favorite and working our way up.

Here’s the first post if anyone wants to look back: https://www.reddit.com/r/nightwish/s/bYqsWEGHWe

10: Angels Fall First (former ranking: 9) This was my least favorite album back then and it still is. Even Tuomas has stated he doesn’t care for it. It’s a drastically different sound than their future releases. None of the songs are especially memorable. It’s not a bad album, but it’s also not one that I’m ever eager to re-listen to.

9: Oceanborn (former ranking: 8) Oceanborn also retains its place at the bottom of the rankings. Again, it’s not a bad album, but not an especially memorable one. I do prefer the original version of Sleeping Sun to the re-recorded version, but it’s the only song of this album I ever really find myself wanting to listen to.

8: Yesterwynde (former ranking: N/A) This is the first album on the list I find myself actively wanting to listen to. For the most part it’s a very well-written album, but sadly I concur that the mix is just… dreadful. If it didn’t sound so muddy and miserable I would have this much higher. I hope we get to hear these songs live some day because I do think that would be excellent.

7: Human Nature (former ranking: 4) Here’s the thing with this album: I actually like most of the songs off of it MORE now than I did when I put it at #4 last time. I just happen to also like most of the other albums a lot more as well. It’s a very good album and it does pain me to put it this low, but none of the songs on it rank among my all-time Nightwish favorites. It sort of gets stuck down here by default. And no, I will not be putting the punctuation marks in the title.

6: Wishmaster (former ranking: 7) Wishmaster becomes the first album to move up the list. I didn’t particularly care for Dead Boy’s Poem or She Is My Sin back in the day, but they’ve grown on me in a major way. The Kinslayer and Come Cover Me remain some of my all-time favorites, so Wishmaster gets a slight bump up.

5: Century Child (Former ranking: 3) Century Child is one of only three Nightwish albums I didn’t discover any new favorites from when I re-listened to all of them a few weeks ago (the other two were AFF and Oceanborn). I still have basically the same opinion on this one I had 2.5 years ago: Slaying the Dreamer, Bless the Child, and End Of All Hope are all-timers, but the rest of the album is still just kind of okay.

4: Endless Forms Most Beautiful (former ranking: 6) God I forgot how fantastic the first outing with Floor was. This to me is the last truly great Nightwish album. Our Decades In The Sun is the only non-instrumental I find myself skipping on this album, but I skip almost all of the ballads except Sleeping Sun. This is also the first physical album I ever bought with my own money (“my own money” was a thing that was just starting to exist when CDs went the way of the dinosaur.) I want to put this one higher but I just can’t.

3: Imaginaerum (former ranking: 5) I was driving home just now trying to decide how I would rank these albums, and I had just settled on Imaginaerum at 4 and EFMB at 3 when Rest Calm came on Spotify shuffle, and holy shit does that song go hard. Song of Myself has also found itself a place in my absolute favorite Nightwish songs. I actually think the best songs on this album are better than the best songs on the second-place album, but this one has more songs that just don’t do it for me (why did Tuomas decide to go jazz club?)

2: Dark Passion Play (former ranking: 2) Speaking of second place album, you won’t find any shakeups at the top of the list. The Poet and the Pendulum is a top 5 Nightwish song of all time for me, and most of the rest of the album is also pretty sensational. I have fond memories of being a small child circa 2009 cruising around with my dad blasting this album.

1: Once (former ranking: 1) In my opinion this is the greatest album of all time, full stop. Every song is an absolute masterpiece. This album was less than two weeks old when I was born and I suspect it was the first complete album I ever heard as a wee lad. I have a very, very hard time imagining this album will ever get dethroned from its top spot among the Nightwish discography.