In the beginning of 2003, on January 11th and 12th, Nightwish played in Oberhausen and in Munich, Germany where Lordi – a 80s-like heavy metal band – supported them. In two days, Nightwish played in front of more than 13000 fans and made a record by playing in Oberhausen “Konig Arena”: between 7500 and 8000 tickets sold for a Finnish band in a foreign country (record which was held before by HIM).

In February 2003, Nightwish announced its plans: a DVD with much live footage from their 2002 tour was being made. Spinefarm Records announced its release in Finland for May 26th 2003. Jukka became the father of Luna that her wife Satu gave birth to on March 11th 2003.
A few concerts were planned for the summer, especially a festival in Spain and two shows for their first visit in Great Britain (Bloodstock festival and London).

The DVD entitled End Of Innocence actually came out at the end of October 2003. The delay was mainly due to the huge amount of videos that Tuomas had to sort out (more than 80 hours!). It eventually contained a two hour report on the band’s history and the live recording of the Summer Breeze 2002 (which is “fucked up” according to Tuomas, because of the sound and mixing problems and the band’s lack of motivation onstage) and their performance in Oslo, Norway in July 2003. Thanks to that DVD, we can also see a few images of Nightwish’s concert on December 31st 1997 which was unpublished, until then.

Nightwish played in Slovakia and in the USA for the first time.

By October, the band had already booked the studios to record its fifth album. The beginning of the recording session was planned for November 2003. By December, 14 new tracks had already been composed.