Kai Hahto is Nightwish's drummer, at first as a stand-in from 2014 and an official member since 2019. Born in Finland in 1973, he came from far more extreme territory than the band's. His reputation came from Rotten Sound, the Finnish grindcore group, and from Wintersun, a melodic metal band of dense arrangements — two contexts demanding, respectively, extreme speed and precision in complex structures. It is an uncommon combination, and precisely what the role in Nightwish asks for: the ability to sustain high tempos and, at the same time, to execute transitions written like film music, with changes of character inside a single track. He came in replacing Jukka Nevalainen, who had stepped back because of chronic insomnia, and moved from temporary to permanent over five years. He recorded Endless Forms Most Beautiful (2015), Human. :II: Nature. (2020) and Yesterwynde (2024), carrying the group's most recent phase.
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