NIGHTWISH Has Next Four Years Already Planned Out, Says TUOMAS HOLOPAINEN

NIGHTWISH keyboardist and main songwriter Tuomas Holopainen has confirmed to Roppongi Rocks in a brand new interview that the band will take what is planned to be a year-long break during all of 2017. "That's the plan, yes," he said. "The last show for this tour is going to happen in October. Then all of 2017 off and back with a vengeance in 2018."

Regarding what he might be doing during NIGHTWISH's time off, Holopainen said: "I don't think I will be doing music. That's the idea of the break. I haven't really given it that much thought. I just enjoy the idea of getting to be at home, doing the gardening, taking care of the horse, just be steady for a while."

Singer Floor Jansen, who made her live debut with NIGHTWISH in 2012 but didn't officially join the band until the following year, was less forthcoming about her plans. She said: "I'm thinking about some ideas but I've nothing official really to share yet." When asked if her REVAMP band is perhaps part of what she is currently considering, she responded: "That's part of the thinking."

Holopainen was also reluctant to share any of NIGHTWISH's plans for when the band returns to live action in 2018. "It's a bit too far away to reveal anything but we know pretty much what the plans are until 2020 or so," he said.

Jansen recently shot down speculation that NIGHTWISH's upcoming break has something to do with tension between members of the group. She told AXS: "Even though we will have this year off, it doesn't have anything to do with how things are in the band. I've seen some people starting to gossip online of why we [would] take a year off. We'll take a year off because we can and because we want to. That's all there is to it. It has nothing to do with how things are in the band. And it also doesn't mean that we haven't been thinking about what's coming next; we have a lot of cool stuff coming up. So we hope that, after this break, people will still be equally excited to come out and see whatever we've got cooking up in our kitchen for them."

NIGHTWISH's 26-date headlining tour of North America launched on February 19 in Sayreville, New Jersey and closed out in Tampa, Florida on March 23. Support on the tour came from Dutch symphonic metallers DELAIN and Finnish melodic metallers SONATA ARCTICA.