The second show took place in Helsinki (in Lepakko Club) on January 9th, 1998. Tuomas had a hard time dealing with hisstress and fear: it was like hell for him. Nightwish and Spinefarm changed their contract from two albums to three. The single, The Carpenter, eventually reached number 8 in the Finnish charts and the album reached number 31. Thanks to that success, Nightwish recorded a video clip for The Carpenter in Norway during spring 1998. The band only gave seven shows. Jukka and Emppu had to make their national service and Tarja was busy with her studies at college. As she returned, Nightwish had Sami (from Nattvindens Grat) in mind for the job of the band’s new bass player. They also had the idea to replace Tuomas’ vocals by Wilka’s (the experience on Angel Fall First did not seduce the composer).
Oceanborn’s recording session started and Wilska’s recordings in the studio was just a 52 minutes formality (‘Devil & the Deep Dark Ocean’ was recorded in two takes and ‘The Pharaoh Sails to Orion’ in three). The singer went back to Savonlinna afterwards. Tuomas personally felt the recording as a true suffering (contrary to Angel Fall First which was no problem to record).

The recording was Hell for Tarja as well. Faced with Tuomas’ complex compositions, she cried a lot since she lacked experience and did not manage to do what Tuomas wished with her voice. According to the singer, the album was too technical. As for Jukka too, Oceanborn was undeniably the most technical album and the one which contained the most difficult songs of the band. He also attributed those difficulties to the lack of experience as a musician. Indeed, Nightwish particularly pushed back its limits with that album – faster beats, increasing quavers, and tripled fickleness. Drums parts were recorded in a 10 m² room, closed and isolated from everything in Kitee’s sport lounge. Besides, Jukka keeps claustrophobic memories from this room. The best conditions were not really there: the rest of the band was hundreds meters away, in the basement, and communicated with him via rattling headphones. However, the album was entirely recorded in Kitee except for the mixing. Tuomas considered Oceanborn as the first really studied and experimented album, contrary to Angel Fall First which he relegated to a position of a sort of demo. The mixing was made in the Finnvox Studios in Helsinki. At that time, Stratovarius really was the band’s greatest influence. Therefore, Ewo (Rytkonen) suggested Timo Tolkki as a technician. Mikko Karmila eventually finished his work.
Besides, the meeting with Karmila was such a great culture shock for the band that Nightwish adopted him for the following recordings. The band had never quarreled about their music except for instrumental track ‘Moondance’ that Emppu did not want to see on the album – he had to accept it though.

During summer 1998, Nightwish started to tour a lot and realized that it all worked perfectly. On November the 13th, Nightwish played in Kitee and recorded a new video for ‘Sacrament Of Wilderness’. That song was released as a single right from November 26th. The video is considered by the band as a total failure. Oceanborn was released on December 7th and reached number 5 in the Finnish charts. The album even remained in the charts for more than 30 weeks (single ‘Sacrament of Wilderness’ reached number 1).