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Sonata Arctica: The days of grays

27/05/10 || Altmer

When I was a young lad, new to metal, power metal used to be a fave genre of mine – and this used to be one of my favourite bands. Such is no more this band’s fate, but they used to appeal to me quite a bit: hooky, melodic choruses with a lot of cheese, funny broken English lyrics and a charismatic frontman brought these guys to my attention five years ago. Then came 2007’s Unia, in which they did away with everything power metal and tried to be a sort of cross between Queen, Nightwish and Dream Theater. I appreciated this move because the songs were really strong (and I still play “Caleb” from that album regularly). But then came this effort, “The days of gays”, and… I wonder what the fuck happened here because this band has really gone down the shitter.

If you want to know what this sounds like: picture their old power metal sound mixed with Unia, except NO hooky choruses at all and completely bland instrumental playing. Nothing that one could ever like about these guys is on here, apart from one song, and none of this is even worthy of bearing the SA name. It feels extremely uninspired and lame and the tunes are bastardized, symphonic efforts in a vague attempt to be Nightwish – only they don’t have a vagina singing, and Tony doesn’t write sympho-metal style songs as good as Tuomas does. So, where does that leave us? In fucken Shitsville, that’s where.

Another bastard thing is that they managed to put the same song (“Everything fades to gay”) on this album twice, except in two different versions: one is slightly longer and has vocals. Seriously, waste of space. The intro is some film music style shit, reminiscent of Danny Elfman and co, which is ok as an intro, but then don’t ruin it by putting some random vocals at the end (if it’s a full version, put on the full version, or just use the intro, don’t do both). That is some seriously lame shit, guys.

There is one exception to all the mediocrity and that is “Flag in the Ground”, which is some weird song about the Boston tea party or whatever, with very cheesy lyrics (sigh, what’s new), and a super-infectious chorus with the requisite double-bass playing. Basically it sounds like old Sonata, “Reckoning Night”-era. I appreciate that move, but I don’t appreciate that it is the ONLY good song on here (and not even original at that). I don’t know what is up with this band but they fucken lost it completely (I’m not even sure they had any charms in the first place to anyone who can’t take huge doses of cheese and needs death metal, not homo metal gayery) and they’re not getting it back. If you have to revert to the most boring style you’ve ever played and done away with on purpose on the last album, to get a move on, why make the only good song on the next album a purely old power metal song? I don’t get this band’s songwriting, even though this is apparently a reworked old song (that explains it, I guess), but it completely breaks any form of continuity with the rest of the album.

Even songs that should be awesome like “Juliet” (which continues a little stalker story that has my two all-time favourite songs by this band in it), are unmemorable and worthless. The odd vocal melodies are well-sung but hookless and do not engage at all. In fact, instead of being mostly cheesy, the band is now mostly boring. And it still doesn’t compare to any of their good tunes (“Don’t say a word” jumps to mind). In short, fuck this band, completely. As far as I’m concerned this band has lost what made them good once upon a time and if order is not restored on the next album – then this band will be another one of the mediocre bands floating in the sea of power metal boredom. I hoped they would be the band that finally broke from that traditional mould, but now that they’ve run out of ideas – they too are over and done with. “Power metal syndrome”, we call this – and one of the last vestiges of this dying genre has crumbled too.

Information
Released: 2009
Label: Nuclear Blast
Website: www.sonataarctica.info
Band
Tony Kakko: vocals, keyboards
Marko Paasikoski: bass
Elias Viljanen: guitars
Henrik Klingenberg: keyboards
Tommy Portimo: drums

Tracklist
01. Everything Fades to G®ay
02. Deathaura
03. The Last (not so very) Amazing G®ays
04. Flag in the Ground
05. Breathing
06. Zeroes
07. The Dead Skin
08. Juliet
09. No Dream Can Heal a Broken Heart (the titles are just fucking astonishing)
10. As If The World Wasn’t Ending
11. The Truth Is Out There
12. Everything Fades to G®ay (full version)

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