Under ordinary circumstances, Esa Holopainen would have spent most of 2020 on the road with his band, Amorphis. The Finnish prog metallers had a 30th year anniversary US tour booked in their calendars, which would have seen them play their breakthrough album, 1994’s Tales From The Thousand Lakes, in full. After that, a shorter jaunt with Nightwish beckoned, and a stint in the studio to record the follow-up to their 2018 album, Queen Of Time.
Of course, like every other band on the planet, Amorphis watched in horror as the pandemic took hold and plans fell apart. They would eventually cancel more than 100 shows, yet for Holopainen, the break offered a moment of unexpected opportunity. In March 2020, as Finland went into lockdown, the guitarist’s longtime friend and Amorphis producer, Nino Laurenne, called with a proposition: that they use the time to work on something Holopainen had long dreamed of doing but had never had the time to focus on – his solo project, Silver Lake By Esa Holopainen.