REACTING to NIGHTWISH (The Greatest Show On Earth) ❤️🎇🙏

WHAT.A.SHOW!!! The hype was real and very very worth it. Reacting to Nightwish's The Greatest Show On Earth will be an experience I will never forget.

Any suggestions, leave 'em in the comments or hit me up on

Best!!!

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[ChaseCarneson]

Thank you all so much. I appreciate you. Have A Damn Good Day. 🙏❤️🤘

[DJORedbad]

Nightwish, "... they are the metal version of the Avengers" --- Chase Cameson, 2020

[rolandconnor]

That's it, I am 68, I have heard it all, and if I only have 30 years or so left to live, I am going out listening to the best that life has to offer. So only listening to Nighwish (with Floor) reactions from now on.

[marinak]

I was there at Tampere concert, andI will never forget that experience 💙🇫🇮

[Amaranthos]

"...*I'm* 'out of Africa.' Just saying.'" ✔️
Caught the Metallica reference ✔️
Noticed Troy was singing ✔️
Kid-on-Christmas ✔️
Usual insightful commentary ✔️
Speechless, humble outro ✔️
Solidifying the idea that there's lots more Nightwish to come ✔️

Missed the other references directly before Metallica ✖️
"It starts with some African tribal drumming, then a medieval hymn (Dies Irea), then the Bach bit (Tocatta & Fuge), then American banjo music, followed by Enter Sandman and then the bassline from I Wish I Had An Angel. Also Symphony of Destruction."

Final rating: 99.5/100

All in all this was easily the best as well as my favorite reaction video to anything that I've ever seen, so thank you once again and well done, keep being awesome Chase. Cannot wait to see what's next.

Edit: added the names of the music references due to all the helpful comments as is per usual from the Nightwish Army

[ashtristis]

Way, way late, but if anyone's interested, some context/info for some of the lyrics from a science-y point of view. I can't express how incredible and meaningful it is to me that Endless Forms, as an album, exists. I'm a geneticist by education, and have been a fan of Nightwish for well over a decade.
Be aware, there's a novella ahead. Because of course there's a lot of references. It's quite possible (even probable) I missed some.
- archaean horizon - archaea are single-celled organisms which lack nuclei. Ancient, everywhere, and essential to life.
- gaea - aside from the obvious definition, it's worth noting that Pangaea is the name of the last of Earth's supercontinents, formed by the collision of several other continents.
- hundred million years - Earth is way, way older than a billion years. It's closer to 4.5 billion. But! Some "first life" estimates peg the first living organisms to be around 3.5 billion years ago (or in other words, when Earth was 1 billion years old).
- carbon feast - all life on earth is carbon-based. It makes up a significant portion of our biology. Other forms are theoretically possible, with silicon-based being most likely, but no evidence of anything other than carbon-based has actually been found. And a tidbit for later, incidental or not - silicon is the main component of sand.
- Luca = "last universal common ancestor". Exactly what it sounds like. Not to be confused with first life, LUCA is the group or species of organisms from which all extant (living) species are descended.
- writing in the garden - I can only imagine this to be a reference to phylogenetic trees. They're a visual representation of species evolution over time, and as the name would suggest, the branching structure looks very much like a tree.
- Devonian sea - the Devonion is the time when terrestrial life first exploded on Earth. Massive, rapid evolution of new species.
- Ion channel - found in cell membranes, they control what goes in and out of cells. Particularly important from a neurological standpoint. They form a critical part of not just our nervous system, but musclar and cardiovascular too.
- travellers out of Africa - an obvious one, I know. Modern man's ancestors lived in Africa, and spread across the globe from there. How and when is still debated.
- Lucy - a very famous partial skeleton of a female from an ancient species of humanoids, Australopithecus afarensis (hence "of the afar"). She was a biped, meaning she walked on two feet. Bipedalism was one of the "early" human traits to evolve, before large brains and stone tools - or, idolatry and weaponry.
- Ionia - an ancient Greek region. The basis of a school of philosophy which sought to explain the world using non-supernatural laws.

[joannavanschaik]

Dawkins commented in a Reddit AMA that he, though not a musical connoisseur, described them as "a highly intelligent group of people as well as brilliant musicians" and that he loved working with them. He's in his 70s and hadn't heard a note of this music before he collaborated with them.

[mornjnglori]

Did I just watch 40 minute of someone reacting to a single song? Yes. Was every minute worth it? Also yes.
Thank you for another insightful reaction Chase! Its fantastic to see you catch so many little things and your delight is fantastic. Keep it up and I'm looking forward to the next video!

[Cartis]

"Can everyone sing in this band? Can everyone do everything?! Yeah, probably. *sigh of resignation*".
I laughed right there!

This song was the last song at the concert here in Zurich back in November 2018 and my voice was HOARSE after 1.5hrs but the end "we were here" had to be screamed as loud as possible. The endorphin rush was unbelievable. After watching the videos over and over again, goosebumbs are still here!

[aura]

How lucky we are to exist at the same time with these metal Titans?

[greeniesr]

"THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL, YOU AND THE BAND", I'm 76 years old, have been listening to Nightwish for over three years....As a Pink Floyd fan, which I have the upmost respect for, Nightwish by far, are the greatest band I've ever listened to....My wife and I are going to see them in New York whenever this Covid thing ends, just hope thee old ticker holds on until then....Super reaction, Bob....

[HeliRy]

I want *so* badly for Nightwish to do an “Unplugged” style performance... just so I can see Tuomas behind a grand piano.

[iirockstar]

a Word for Word this Masterpiece:

[ Part 1: Four Point Six] (age of The Earth)
"Archaean horizon, The first sunrise"
Earth's history is divided into four principal Eons: the Hadean, the Archean, Proterozoic, and the Phanerozoic. The Hadean is the Eon during which the Earth and Moon formed; in the Archaean, primordial life appeared.

"On a pristine gaea"
Gaia is the primordial Greek goddess of the Earth. More recently, the Gaia hypothesis is a recognition of the living and nonliving Earth systems which form an interdependent whole. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…)

"Opus perfectum, Somewhere there, us sleeping" Pristine perfection (of silence, of a blank page, of the very point from which the big bang itself sprung) implies a rich creative potential. Here Earth is painted in the same powerful way. Diversity awaits; unborn beings are sleeping the same sleep to which they will return at death. This interpretation is thematically linked with the album's opening track, "Shudder before the Beautiful, " which includes the lyrics, "The music of this awe, Deep silence between the notes, Deafens me with endless love." Or as the furious hobbit screamed at the novice trumpeter, "An artist respects the silence, it serves as the foundation of creativity." (youtu.be/…)

[Part 2: Life]

"The cosmic law of gravity Pulled the newborns around a fire, A careless cold infinity in every vast direction. Lonely farer in the Goldilocks zone"
Gravity pulls the Earth and its inhabitants around the energizing Sun in an otherwise inhospitable universe. Earth is the only planet in our solar system's circumstellar habitable zone, orbiting at the "just right, not too hot, not too cold" distance from the Sun. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…)

"She has a tale to tell, From the stellar nursery into a carbon feast, Enter LUCA"
In astronomy, stellar nurseries are the birthplaces of stars: they nurse stars (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…). Poetically, our solar system is another "stellar nursery, " in which a star is the nurse, caring for and warming a planet of 'newborns, ' early carbon-based life. "Feast" evokes the incorporation of plentiful chemical building blocks into rudimentary life forms. "LUCA" stands for "Last universal common ancestor, " the one single organism from which all other presently existing life on Earth descended. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…)

"The tapestry of chemistry is a writing in the garden, Leading us to the mother of all"
The periodic table of elements does look like a sort of patchwork tapestry, but this can go further. The historical function of tapestries was as "nomadic murals, " pictographical histories which moving people could pack up and revisit wherever they went. The "writing in the garden, " in nature, is not only the stone murals left by dead animals in the form of fossils, but is also this chemical writing that encodes the relatively nomadic DNA molecule with the instructions for life. The scientific investigation of this information leads us back to LUCA, and further. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…)

"We are one, We are a universe, "
This is the natural conclusion to draw from the fact that life shares common origin, that all life is built with the same blocks, and that all life on Earth is interdependent (gaia hypothesis). The multiplicity of beings on Earth are one, just as the cells in a body are one.

"Forebears of what will be Scions of the Devonian sea."
The Devonian geologic time period marked the first significant, rapid diversification of life (and the more well-known Cambrian explosion is another of these 'adaptive radiation' events). It was during the Devonian that the 'higher plants' appeared and blanketed the continents with forests. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…). The word "scion" refers to a shoot of a plant cut for grafting, and is also used to denote a descendent of a notable family. Both meanings apply.

"Aeons pass, Writing the tale of us all. A day-to-day new opening For the greatest show on Earth"
Evolutionary adaptation is written in the DNA and as fossils in the rocks, and is ongoing. Species die, diversifiy and delineate. Every day is different, every day something changes.

"Ion channels welcoming the outside world To the stuff of stars"
Ion channels are found in the membranes of all cells, controlling the flow of energy through the cells. The stuff of stars is all the physical matter we're made of. So it's the ion channels, guiding enery, which allow living bodies to interact with the rest of the world by exchanging energy with it. "Stuff of stars" is surely a Sagan reference: "The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff." (For fun: youtu.be/…)

"Bedding the tree of a biological holy, Enter life"
The bed of a tree is the nutrient-rich soil from which it grows, a soil made of dead things. The "tree of a biological holy" is probably the tree of life (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…). This line refers to the "holy" legendary tree of everlasting life but also means the conceptual, branching family tree of all life, whose bed consists of all deceased beings (in a more literal sense), or all extinct ancestral species (in a more abstract sense). This is thematically linked with the song "Alpenglow."

"We are here to care for the garden, The wonder of birth Of every form most beautiful"
"We" could be human beings tasked with acting as nature's stewards, garden of eden style, but that's not chronological -- human beings haven't quite appeared in the song yet. "We" could instead be all of life itself, in a gaia-philosophy sense, which posits that life creates environments ever more hospitable to more life. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…) Or maybe it's a combination of these two thoughts: life eventually creates an environment suitable for the development of consiously acting, thinking human stewards.

[Part 3: The Toolmaker]

"After a billion years, The show is still here. Not a single one of your fathers died young."
Every single one of a given person's ancestors, male and female, lived past puberty at least. But "fathers" evokes "forefathers, " which has a nicer storytelling ring to it than "parents."

"The handy travelers Out of Africa Little Lucy of the Afar"
Handymen are good with tools; travelers posessing hands rather than forefeet walk upright. Hominids originated in Africa and spread to the rest of the world from there. Lucy is a particular specimen of the Australopithecus, one of many "missing links" between modern humans and nonhuman ancestors. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…)

"Gave birth to fantasy, To idolatry, To self-destructive weaponry. Enter the God of gaps Deep within the past. Atavistic dread of the hunted!"
The brain grows, consciousness and creativity along with it. Atavism is the tendency to revert to ancestral type, an evolutionary throwback. Fight-or-flight instincts that helped human ancestors survive have now been creatively projected onto the world to both explain it (origins, meaning, suffering) and gain security in it (bargaining through sacrifice). These are the roots of theism. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…)

"Enter Ionia, the cradle of thought, The architecture of understanding. The human lust to feel so exceptional, To rule the Earth"
Nomadic people develop agriculture and settle down into civilizations. The word "architecture" is at once both literal and figurative. The efficiency of civilization graces people with free time to do more than just feed themselves. They develop rich cultural traditions, arts and philosophies, much of which are deeply influenced by how different humans now are from all the rest of life.

"Hunger for shiny rocks, For giant mushroom clouds, The will to do as you'd be done by."
Shiny rocks are wealth: gold, precious stones, jewels, and later uranium which leads to the nuclear arms race. The golden rule -- "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" -- is a coin with a dark side: "an eye for an eye, " revenge. This ensures the "MAD"ness of mutually assured destruction. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…)

"Enter history, the grand finale. Enter ratkind."
"Ratkind" comes from Richard Dawkins' book "The Ancestor's Tale." Dawkins imagines a post-apocalyptic world in which rodents feast on the remnants of humanity (and humanity's garbage). The rat population explodes, and then as they exhaust these resources they turn on one another for food. As a consequence of natural selection, the rats diverge into new carnivorous and herbivorous species, and perhaps, eventually, a specices of rodent whose intelligence rivals that of humans. This is "ratkind."

"Man, he took his time in the sun, Had a dream to understand A single grain of sand."
From William Blake: "To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour." ...And the story of the planet in 24 minutes. Not bad.

"He gave birth to poetry, But one day'll cease to be. Greet the last light of the library"
A bittersweet redundancy: poetry with library, the last light with ceasing to be. Reminiscent of Elan: "Be the first to greet the morn [...] Travel with great élan, dance a jig at the funeral."

"We were here!"

[aura]

I think I've watched interview where Thoumas said he at first was very afraid of mistakes and he wanted his concerts to be perfect, but then he understood that mittle slips are just like life, unpredictable, it gives character and uniqueness for that specific performance and that it reminds everyone he is only human

[seibz]

I don't know if you already pointed it out, but what i really like is seeing Emppu. Unlike most guitarist of other bands he never tries to put himself in front. He really is skilled and could act as a rockstar or try to shine for himself but he puts all his skills and energy for the compositions, for the musicality. And he never fails. He deserves more credit for that.

[StergiosMekras]

"Can everyone do everything?"

Followed by a resigned "...yeah, probably..."

[samulisironen]

The period between the first time she sings "the last light of the library" and the moment the lyrics kick back in is meant to tell the history of music. It's hard to tell in this version, but the ones you can hear evolve from primal drums to Bach to banjos to Metallica and end on an EDM beat, however there are a ton of pieces layered on top of each other, which tell the history of music. A true masterclass in songwriting in my opinion.

[toddmarvin]

I saw Nightwish in a small theater, maybe 500 people. No pyrotechnics, just the back screen. The music and their stage presence made it the best show I've ever seen. Floor and Marko take control of the stage from the moment they come on. I was so stunned, almost overwhelmed! I need to see them again!

[dirtynumb]

There will become a day when I won't cry like a lost child listening to this song, but it is not this day. Thank you for giving me even more appreciation of this with your comments. <3