TUOMAS HOLOPAINEN - MUSIC INSPIRED BY THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE

1) Glasgow 1877; 2) Into the West; 3) Duel & Cloudscapes; 4) Dreamtime; 5) Cold Heart of the Klondike; 6) The Last Sled; 7) Goodbye, Papa; 8) To Be Rich; 9) A Lifetime of Adventure; 10) Go Slowly Now, Sands of Time Bonus track: 11) A Lifetime of Adventure (Alternative Version)
Deluxe Edition CD2: Instrumental Versions: 1) Glasgow 1877; 2) Into the West; 3) Duel & Cloudscapes; 4) Dreamtime; 5) Cold Heart of the Klondike; 6) The Last Sled; 7) Goodbye, Papa; 8) To Be Rich; 9) A Lifetime of Adventure; 10) Go Slowly Now, Sands of Time

A fantasy soundtrack to accompany a Scrooge McDuck comic from a symphonic metal musician. Don't you just love how something like this exists at all?

Like all Finnish people, I have a deep and deeply cultural personal affection towards Donald Duck and the rest of his extended family - an ostensibly American creation who has been adopted by Europe so keenly that this continent has created an entire universe around Donald that his birth country doesn't have the faintest clue of (Mickey though? You guys can keep him, he's considered filler content in the EU). Nowhere as much as in Finland, where Donald is a practically a national hero and whose titular weekly comic series has been going since 1951 and forms an integral part of everyone's upbringing. My favourite Donald Duck artist is Keno Don Rosa whose works I own in hardbound books multiple times over, and his magnum opus is considered to be The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: a multi-story series which pulls together every single reference to Scrooge's past that the character's original creator Carl Barks ever included in his stories (no matter how slight) and then forms the "official" biography of the world's richest duck through them, from literal rags in his childhood Scotland to his rise to the top. It's a genuinely fantastic collection full of great art, great writing and a range of emotions across both the main series and the supplementary works, and it's also one of my favourite pieces of Donald Duck related media.

Tuomas Holopainen on the other hand is the principal songwriter, keyboard player and all-around figurehead of the Finnish metal band Nightwish - a band who, beyond one album, I have no real attachment towards. More importantly, Holopainen is not only a huge Donald Duck fan (he's a Finn, so it checks out) but also a wannabe soundtrack composer. Music Inspired by the Life and Times of Scrooge is exactly what it says on the title, a pseudo-score which has been inspired by the comic series and at times is meant to literally soundtrack particular sequences or story beats from it: the album was Holopainen's passion project which he had kept in his mind for years until he finally got the time (and the fuck-you levels of money and clout to do whatever he wants) to put it together. Through it he finally gets to indulge in his dreams of being a movie composer further than he could in his band, resulting in a largely orchestral album full of big budget Hollywood bombast in its magnificent string and horn sections, pounding drums and Holopainen's guiding piano, with a little bit of his metal flair surfacing from time to time. In other words, it's exactly what you'd expect from a soundtrack album by a symphonic metal composer obsessed about fantasy scores. And it's got over-the-top vocals and dramatic narration, too.

It's plenty cheesy but I'm open to embracing that cheese - I love that these colossal orchestral songs are dedidcated to retelling a cartoon duck's journey from rags to riches through song, and I do also have a particular soft spot in my heart for overblown music production. That said, without that connection to the comics which I also love, I doubt I would have given this the time I have over the years. Holopainen has lofty dreams of being a movie composer but he doesn't have a unique voice when he tries to enter that field: Music Inspired by The Life and Times of Scrooge is a potpourri of fantasy soundtrack tropes that are only ever really given their own character when Holopainen either leans a little bit more on Scrooge's Celtic heritage (I'm just a sucker for bagpipes, uileann pipes, you name it) or his own background in operatic metal comes to surface. He's a talented composer but one who's strongly indebted to his inspirations and idols, and his only personal touch is his love for all things humongous which means that subtlety is banned word in his studio. Because I'm deeply familiar with the original comic I can follow the emotional beats Holopainen goes for with each song, but as an actual musical listening experience it doesn't sound like anything that would be truly unique for this story, and you could slot it into any Hollywood-inspired occasion that calls for vaguely defined Epic Fantasy Music.

But that's then where the vocals step in and do the heavy lifting, because you can just have those reference points sung aloud to drive in the connection between the inspiration and the music. Most of the songs feature one voice or another, ranging from textural choirs to spoken word narration (from Scrooge's POV, with a gentle Scottish brogue): half of the album has traditional rock vocals where the lyrics either literally reference the characters during particular plot points or they convey the general theme of the album i.e. that Scrooge doesn't seek fortunes to be rich per se, but to have a rich life full of adventure and memories worth treasuring. The vocals are mostly fine: I can't get into the heavily accented power metal vocals in "Cold Heart of the Klondike" (the closest thing to a Nightwish song here, just add some power chords), but the bulk of the singing throughout does actually add that little bit of extra atmosphere that the songs call for. This is where my lifetime of headbanging to Sonic the Hedgehog vocal themes probably helps and has prepared me for: I am absolutely accepting of corny lyrics about cartoon characters that not only take themselves completely seriously but also try and reach for something larger than life with what they're saying. Sometimes they hit a right sweet spot, too: the main "theme" of sorts of the entire project, "A Lifetime of Adventure", gives that glorious fuzzy hair-raising feeling that you'd want from a grand sweeping anthem of this ilk. My favourite song here, incidentally, is the alternative version of "A Lifetime of Adventure" which has ostensibly been included as a bonus track - it strips away the drums and guitars and only leaves the orchestra to accompany the vocals, but that somehow makes the song sound even more dramatic.

Despite everything that you could hold against it - the somewhat generic backdrops, the sometimes clunky vocals, the love-or-hate cheesiness of it all - Music Inspired by The Life and Times of Scrooge is definitely one of its kind. Even though it has flaws you can tell how much it means to its creator, and it's awash with overwhelming passion and dedication to its source material and The Concept so much that it's hard not to admire it for that alone. You probably need to know the comic to some degree to get everything out of it or to even be in the mindset to be able to get anything out of it, but that's fine: this is a big-budget niche product and Holopainen gladly hasn't made any compromises to his vision to make it more palatable for audiences more familiar with his usual fare. This isn't album I listen to often - or one that I particularly adore either - but I deeply love that something like this exists to begin with - and sometimes when you least expect it, it can even manage to catch you emotionally by surprise.

Physically: The copy I have is the flashy deluxe edition of the album, which comes in a wide digibook package (not neatly square-shaped as pictured above) - it was something my dad randomly bought for me around the album's release for no real reason, and in hindsight that was actually really thoughtful of him - he doesn't really show his love out in the air or give gifts, so I appreciate just knowing that he remembered by love for Don Rosa and put 1+1 together between that and my music nerdiness. The cover art is drawn by Don Rosa himself and the booklet within the packaging features a ton of his initial rough sketches and storyboard drafts for the original comics - there's also a big centrepiece photo of Holopainen and Don Rosa smiling side by side, which is both awkward and adorable. The deluxe edition also comes with a bonus disc with instrumental versions of all songs which I've maybe listened to once in my entire lifetime - I haven't spent the space talking about it specifically because, well, it's the instrumentals and that's that. I guess if you find the vocals genuinely difficult to stomach, the instrumental versions allow you to treat the whole thing as an actual score of sorts.