Nightwish is not a dictatorship, says bassist Marco Hietala

A photograph of Nightwish bass player Marco Hietala
Marco Hietala (Image credit: Getty)

Nightwish bassist Marco Hietala insists the band isn’t a dictatorship.

Despite mainman Tuomas Holopainen overseeing much of the band’s output and direction, Hietala says he and the other members play an important part in the decision-making process.

Hietala tells Planetmosh: “Every democracy has their president and Tuomas, he’s not a dictator or tyrant – everybody has their say.

“Obviously Tuomas writes most of the songs and lyrics but there are four or five songs on the latest album where I got music written, a couple where I got some lines of lyrics written, and then when we get together to rehearse and arrange, everybody has their say.

“When you write songs with keyboards you cannot really tell if something is uncomfortable for a bass player to play, so sometimes things will have to be changed that way, but there’s also the fact that we have really free sharing of ideas in the rehearsal room so anybody can come up with something and we’ll try it out and see if it works.”

Nightwish will release their live DVD Vehicle Of Spirit on November 4. It includes footage of their sold-out performance at Wembley Arena last year, which Hietala describes as a real achievement for the group.

He adds: “Now that was an achievement for the band and I guess personal achievement for everybody as well. The UK, with the language difference, has been a hard market for us to get into traditionally, so to be the first Finnish band to headline Wembley and also to sell out Wembley, yeah it was a big thing to achieve.”

The band have a number of tour dates still to come in 2016.

Nightwish remaining tour dates 2016

Aug 06: Montreal Heavy Montreal, QC
Aug 20: Jamsa Himos park, Finland
Aug 26: Zyrakow Czad Festival, Poland
Sep 08: Lisbon Coliseu, Poland
Sep 10: Madrid Barclaycard Arena
Sep 14: Sofia Arena Armeec, Bulgaria
Oct 09: Tokyo Loud Park Festival, Japan

We tracked down the Nightwish dancer from that video at Download festival

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.