Former Nightwish bandmates Marko Hietala and Tarja team up for new single

Marko Hietala & Tarja — (Image credit: Eva Cuenca)

Former Nightwish members Tarja Turunen and Marko Hietala have teamed up for a brand new single, the suitably OTT Left On Mars, and you can watch the former bandmates' new video below.

The pair originally reunited for the very first time since Tarja's acrimonious 2005 departure from Nightwish last year, performing Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom Of The Opera (which featured on Nightwish's 2002 album Century's Child) at Z7 Summer Nights in Pratteln, Switzerland last summand again on August 3 in Savonlinna, Finland at the fitting destination of the Olavinlinna 15th-century castle.

“A love song to my wife which ends up uniting two old friends," explains Hietala of the new song. "Even if the song itself sucked, I would be pleased about the result!"

"It was a strong one immediately," adds Hietala's's guitarist and album producer Tuomas Wäinölä on hearing the song for the first time. "I think Marko had the idea of it being a duet too, straight from the beginning. After that it was just a matter of grinding and demoing it well.

"The fun part was taking the song to Switzerland on an USB drive, like proper agents! We had this secret meeting when we had a Pratteln Outdoor gig with Tarja, both playing our own sets. And yeah, it was great to see them together on stage and finally singing the same tune again!"

Hietala, who shared a new live lyric video for Dead God's Son back in January, is currently working on new material for his next album. The so far title-less album is going down the same direction as Hietala's debut solo album Pyre Of The Black Heart which was released back in 2019, "hard-prog with some groovy metal and rock, with depth and melody."

Artists

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.