On January 12th 2021, Marko Hietala announced his withdrawal from the public eye and departure from NIGHTWISH, where he had been the bass player and second vocalist for 20 years.

A lot of people wondered if we would ever see him return to the music world.
But Hietala has been busy, especially in his home-country Finland. He played some festival shows with his band in 2022 and performed with the Finnish all-star group NORTHERN KINGS. Before Christmas, he took part in the traditional “Raskasta Joulua” (“heavy Christmas”) tour and had a seriously good time performing on stage again.
Today, Hietala is pleased to release a new live footage/lyric video for his track 'Dead God's Son', taken from his 2020 studio album Pyre of the Black Heart, which was filmed throughout the recent festival season in Finland.

Marko Hietala stated about the song: “In ´Dead God’s Son´ we are in the infamous existential crisis. Everything hurts and everything is precious. Every direction is just as good and nothing will replace whatever has been lost. Like many others, I’ve been there. And you always go there alone.”

Check out the video here:

Listen to the song + order Pyre of the Black Heart here: https://markohietala.bfan.link/pyre-of-the-black-heart.ema

Marko and his bandmates are currently working on new material for their next album.
So far the title-less album is going down the same direction as the previous one: hard-prog with some groovy metal & rock with depth and melody.
Stay tuned & check his social media for updates!