Nightwish

Nightwish are the reason “symphonic metal” stopped being a contradiction and became a genre. Built in Kitee, Finland around Tuomas Holopainen’s film-score ambitions, they survived two very public vocalist changes — Tarja Turunen, Anette Olzon, Floor Jansen — and each era created its own fanbase instead of splitting one.

The lab keeps coming back to them because their family tree touches everything in Finnish metal, and their vocalist saga is the genre’s best case study in how a band outlives its own voice.