Finnish cheese-metal masters Sonata Arctica have a bulbous 7 albums under their belt in their 18 years of existence, with the first in 1999 ‘Ecliptica’. Throughout the years the band built up a good following and releasing at least something nearly every year since they started, which goes to show these lads aren’t afraid of a bit of hard graft! Luckily, it worked out for them and shows with their ninth gold disc!
This latest album release was fully recorded and produced by the band only, so you have to give them credit for that! On top of that, they’re going back to their roots, power metal style!!
A Christmas feel to the first track ‘The Wolves die Young’ and the welcoming voice of the lovely Tony Kakkow. The only singer who can get away and sound bloody good at rough English. The typical epic Finnish over the top guitars and keyboards doesn’t go amiss. It’s as if it was all made for Sonata!
‘Running lights’ is again amazingly over the top with everything going on and it just works! Tony’s voice however, is a little too loud and overpowering to the rest of the track. Still, catchy sing-along chorus and fantastic drumming then, the solo!! Brilliant!! A lot of these hard as nails metal heads would learn a lot from bands like this, so what if they’re extremely cheesy? They can play their instruments better than you!
‘Take One Breath’ shows exactly why I like this band. The beats are all over the shop and the vocals are perfect! I can safely say that nobody sounds remotely like this chap.
‘Blood’ is more than worthy of a mention. The intro is all dark and eerie, the piano sounds as if it’s played in an empty hall. Aside from this it gets a bit weird with singing about how wonderful blood is in our body. So moving on.
Reminding me a lot of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Albatross is ‘Half a Marathon man’ at least the intro anyway! The vocals are quite different in this one, rockier with a lot of high screams yet still maintaining the Sonata feel. Even the guitars are more “metalled” up.
The cheesiest song on the album has to be ‘Love’ stuffed with more sweaty cheese than any other with the lyrics about, well, being in love. I’d be quite happy never hearing this one again. Kinda ruining the rest of the album with it. Sonata are more than good at producing some quality slow anthems, but this just isn’t one of them!
After letting out a huge tiresome sigh, I move on to the last track ‘Larger than life’. The slow track that the previous should have been, typically sounding with some added extras like male choir vocals and then in comes Tony, sounding like an evil cartoon character, you really have to hear to believe! I can really see this one on a Disney film. Don’t let that put you off though!
Honestly though, its typical sonata Arctica so fans are going to love it, and as the keyboardist Henrik said, “There’s some oddballs in there”
(7/10 Charlene Rance)
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