Nightwish’s return to live performances might take some time.
“Well, I was part of the decision, as we all were. We weren’t forced into the conclusion, but we were pointed in the direction of it quite early on, even before the pandemic,” Troy Donockley told Sakis Fragos of Rock Hard Greece about the band’s announcement that they will take a break from touring and won’t promote their new album, ‘Yesterwynde.’
The multi-instrumentalist continued, “We realized that we were in danger of burning out of doing too much. So we made the decision, and extraordinarily, the decision to have this hiatus, this time off, is for all of us. It has no time limit. We have absolutely no plans at all for when we will bring the band out again to play live.”
“So, it’s not terminal. It’s an extended time off,” the rocker said before giving his prediction for when they might start again as a band. “But I can envisage some more live work probably in 2027, which is the 30th anniversary of the band. I should imagine we’ll do something live to mark that. We might do that.”
“The album is coming out in September. We’re not going to do any shows,” Nightwish’s Tuomas Holopainen previously also said. “The reasons are personal, we’re not going to go into it, but it was something that had to be done for this band to continue. There’s no bad blood between the members, nothing like that. We just have to take a long breather.”
He added the following when asked if they will perform live again or if Nightwish is done touring, “Personally, I haven’t really given it much thought. I don’t know how long the break is going to be. We just signed a multi-album deal with Nuclear Blast, so that is evidence there are going to be more albums in future. Nightwish are definitely not going to stop, so everybody stop worrying. We just need a breather from touring.”
In April 2023, Nightwish announced they would stop touring for now and won’t promote their next album. They mentioned that the decision is personal but important for the band’s future. The band’s tenth album, ‘Yesterwynde,’ arrived on September 20, 2024.