During a conversation with Ultimate Guitar's Justin Beckner, Nightwish bassist Marco Hietala talked about the band's latest album, Human. :II: Nature., released on April 10 via Nuclear Blast. Following is an excerpt from the chat.

On Human. :II: Nature. being a double album

Hietala: "It was kind of a natural continuation of the ambition that the group and Tuomas (Holopainen / keyboardist, band leader) has shown. I have to say that putting in the classical orchestra, which he composed and used Troy (Donockley / multi-instrumentalist) and Floor (Jansen / vocals) on a couple of songs, it's more of his work. But my opinion is that Nightwish's success - we're going on our third vocalist, the drummer has changed, the bass player has changed, and we've added a guitar player and a pipe player in the same package...

After all that, I think the main reason for the band's success is Tuomas' writing and his lyric writing. When he approached us with all the stuff written and asked if it was OK, to me. It was totally OK - he's got the right. It was a double album, to boot. Of course, I had plenty of things to do on the band album so I feel satisfied that I did my part. I'm not a young guy anymore so these days, ego has got nothing to do with how well you can make music work if you concentrate on finding the best things for the song with your mates."

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Nightwish recently released their long-awaited ninth record, Human. :II: Nature., that has now conquered the charts worldwide, including #1 in their home-country Finland and Germany and #2 in Canada, Austria, Hungary and Switzerland. Further chart-entries below.

Get the album in various formats here. Get it digitally here.