Dark Passion Play is the sixth studio album by Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish.

Several other versions of the song were posted on YouTube and torrent sites a month later; the entire album with record label voice-overs had been leaked on the Internet by 2 August.

[5] The album debuted at number one in 6 European countries, selling over 100,000 copies in Finland (triple platinum).

In search of a replacement, the band conducted auditions from 17 March 2006 to 15 January 2007, receiving over 2000 demo tapes in the process.

When the drummer Jukka Nevalainen was asked about the overall cost of the new album, he was quoted as saying "Roughly half a million... We don't know the exact sum down to the euros and cents as yet.

on 16 August 2008 Tuomas Holopainen recalled:After the split with Tarja, we started writing without a singer, and it was quite a liberating feeling.

And there was such a huge amount of money involved, over 800.000 euros, that we needed to sell at least a few albums to get going," Tuomas Holopainen recalled in 2008.

[10] The final mixing process spent more than 75 days at the Finnvox Studios in Kitee, Finland, the same place where Nightwish recorded all their previous albums.

On Once, much inspiration came from Native American music, especially "Creek Mary's Blood", which featured Lakota Indian musician John Two-Hawks.

However, on Dark Passion Play, much inspiration comes from Finnish and Irish culture and music, which can be clearly heard on "Last of the Wilds".

[22][23] It has been certified as Platinum in Germany[24] and Hungary,[25] and Gold in Austria,[26] Poland,[27] Sweden[28] and Switzerland;[29] Dark Passion Play is also the most successful Nightwish album in UK and USA[30] with sales in the United States of over 134,000 copies.

[33] In November 2014, the NHL hockey team Minnesota Wild featured the album's first track "The Poet and the Pendulum" in their season trailer.

[37] The Dark Passion Play tour thus started, visiting the United States, Canada, most of Europe, Asia, and Australia.

In November, the band played in South America, and before this leg they took a three-month break; Nightwish began the third leg in 2009, with dates in North America and Europe, and also playing in several summer metal festivals, including Graspop Metal Meeting and Masters of Rock.

The DVD contains three music videos as well as a documentary featuring material from Israel to South America, directed by Ville Lipiäinen.