The Poet and the Pendulum (13:56)

Cover of Dark Passion Play

From Dark Passion Play and 9 other releases

‘The Poet and the Pendulum’ is the opening track of the album Dark Passion Play. The song is about Nightwish’s main composer Tuomas Holopainen’s life. It lasts almost 14 minutes, and is the longest song the band have made (Holopainen blogged in 2010 that a track from upcoming album Imaginaerum would surpass it in length, but in the end Song of Myself turned out about 20 seconds shorter). The music is highly inspired by soundtracks and film scores.

The title is a word play on the title of Edgar Allen Poe’s 1842 short story The Pit and the Pendulum.

The song is divided into five parts: “White Lands of Empathica”, “Home”, “The Pacific”, “Dark Passion Play” and “Mother & Father”.

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The end
The songwriter's dead, the blade fell upon him
Taking him to the white land of Empathica
Of innocence, Empathica, innocence

MetroLyrics Full lyrics at MetroLyrics

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  • WanderingAlmas

    Sums up all of Nightwish in one song. The Poet And The Pendulum has everything.

    14 Mar 5:15am Reply
  • deadpool1973

    to call it epic would be an understatement

    10 Mar 4:21pm Reply
  • Lysyane

    One of the best compositions of Tuomas. The movements of this song accompany perfectly the lyric, it is exciting, do not get tired of listen ♥

    5 Mar 2:49am Reply
  • Api_of_Forest

    A brilliant piece of art. "Save me! [guillotine]"->"Mother & Father" At max volume from big speakers...Unforgettable.

    2 Mar 8:28pm Reply
  • byanji

    This is absolutely the best song of Nightwish. Masterpiece!

    2 Feb 5:52pm Reply
  • RedGleek

    Best song ever.

    18 Dec 2012 Reply
  • artichoke_pizza

    epic shit

    27 Nov 2012 Reply
  • yen4th

    I a whore for the cold world

    7 Nov 2012 Reply
  • Banets

    great...

    1 Nov 2012 Reply
  • Rose-Amaranthe

    Best song from the Dark Passion Play album ! ♥

    13 Oct 2012 Reply
  • shiny_mist

    Masterpiece of a song!

    1 Oct 2012 Reply
  • clwydian

    Excellent and so complex

    30 Sep 2012 Reply
  • Pheneks

    This has to be their best piece. This is the epitome of symphonic metal. Fuck, I can listen to this all day.

    11 Sep 2012 Reply
  • Reverentia_Vmn

    great instrumental version, but vocals.....

    31 Aug 2012 Reply
  • umosay

    He should just write songs like this, bugger all the short pop stuff.

    28 Aug 2012 Reply
  • lofidan

    ...and then thousands of poor quality fan-clips were soundtracked. Yawn!

    20 Aug 2012 Reply
  • CrimsonCamel

    Holy shit. What a way to open an album!

    16 Aug 2012 Reply
  • joowww

    just epic!

    15 Aug 2012 Reply
  • TheFoureyedPoet

    Lovely. Brilliant band and Anette Olzon brings a special dimension to Nightwish. The Foureyed Poet.

    11 Aug 2012 Reply
  • optikmarc

    Perhaps they should do just one show with live orchestra as Dimmu Borgir did last year, that would be great. yep, that would be awesome.

    14 Jul 2012 Reply
  • All 837 shouts

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