

The mixing was done by Holopainen, Tero Kinnunen and Mikko Karmila, and mastering by Mika Jussila, at Finnvox Studios. Tuomas Holopainen was confirmed on December 18, 2019, to be at Finnvox Studios mixing Nightwish's upcoming studio album, set for release in the first quarter of 2020. On October 31, 2019, Floor Jansen confirmed that recording for the new album had been completed, stating that she was "very, very happy" with it. Jansen stated in November that she believed the recording process would be similar to Endless Forms Most Beautiful 's, for which the band went through lengthy rehearsals before starting to record.

The band would "use the instrumentation in a different way than before", with Holopainen stating, "You want to search for some new ways of using it so that it doesn't end up sounding the same as before." Recording would start in July 2019, for a planned Spring 2020 release. In July 2018 while the band was out on tour, Holopainen stated that he had written "80 or 90%" of the material for Nightwish's next album, which would consist of ten or eleven songs. After the release of the album, Tuomas said that "all the flood gates opened" and he started to write new material for Nightwish. In 2017, Holopainen, along with the singer and his wife Johanna Kurkela and the band's member Troy Donockley, formed the trio-band Auri to create a self-titled album. Īccording to Tuomas Holopainen, after the creation of the previous album, which he described as "the band's best so far", he could not write new material for the next album because of his lack of inspiration, which was "emptied". Holopainen said in a 2016 interview that the band would continue between the years of 20, with another album that will continue the themes explored in Endless Forms Most Beautiful. Background and recording Production įollowing a tour in support of the band's previous album, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, the band took a year-long break in which Jansen was focusing on her first child.
