The Finns of 'Sonata Arctica' return with a new studio recording, 'Clear Cold Beyond', after a period of ten years which saw the composer and singer of the group, 'Tony Kakko', deviate from the style of power metal which was their strength in the early 2000s and for which they had built up a significant fan base. For my part, this evolution towards more moderate metal with the introduction of progressive elements showed all the talent of the leader of Arctica' to open up to other musical horizons, the two albums 'The Ninth Hour' dating from 2016 and 'Pariah's Child' from 2019 attesting to this inflection towards more moderate metal while keeping this muscularity that we knew in the previous albums. And in 2022, the 'Tony Kakko' band has graced us with two acoustic albums, 'Acoustic Adventures – Volume One' and 'Acoustic Adventures – Volume Two' which highlighted even more, in these refined reinterpretations, the melodic side of around twenty of their titles.
So what's new with this latest album from the Finns? I read a lot of reviews which reject the last ten years and which welcome this new album as a renewal of the group which returns to the style of the beginning. For my part, I will be much less categorical because, even if it is clear that we find the very muscular power metal watered down in the previous opuses, 'Clear Cold Beyond' ultimately contains a judicious mix between the different periods showing that 'Tony Kakko' offers us a sort of metling pot of the best of 'Sonata Arctica', all styles combined, and even more, even eyeing the side of symphonic metal. Certainly, the first three compositions are real melodic skuds with a lot of double pedals but, listening to 'First In Line' (strongly reminiscent of 'San Sebastien'), if you remove the calvacade on the drums of 'Tommy Portimo ', this title could very well be covered without reducing the tempo too much in a much more moderate version thanks to unifying melodic lines. Same observation with 'California' in which 'Timo Kakko' offers us a magnificent vocal performance by integrating beautiful nuances into the chorus, the more moderate section at 2.50 being the proof. And then, within the compositions themselves, we find this duality between up-tempos and breaks which are the great strength of 'Sonata Arctica': 'Shah Mat' is the typical title with always catchy melodic lines in a epic atmosphere brought by grandiose choirs in the introduction for example, then, 'Dark Empath' deploys its grandiose six minutes which would not be denied by the tenors of symphonic metal (see the video here), also with a lot of backing vocals, and which constitutes my favorite of the album. 'Cure For Everything' continues in the same vein as the first track 'First In Line' and 'A Monster Only You Can't See' changes register by offering us an atmosphere close to groups like 'Kamelot', 'Serenity' or 'Avantasia', bringing new diversity to this very beautiful album (see the video here). Follows 'Teardrops' which is also full of remarkable rhythmic alternations and which benefits from very beautiful instrumental arrangements, 'Henrik Klingenberg' doing an admirable job on keyboards, then, 'Angel Defiled' is yet another jewel of melodic metal, each artist bringing his stone in the building (Elias Viljanen's guitar solos being admirable), the catchy finale being pure joy. And then, when we talk about 'Sonata Arctica', we can't miss the ballads that made them famous and, in this opus, 'The Best Things' is still a model of the genre with a chorus that is added immediately in the head, then, the album ends with the title song in the form of another magnificent power ballad.
In summary, the Finns from 'Sonata Arctica' released an excellent album which is a sort of fusion of all the styles developed over more than 25 years and if some speak of a new beginning, I prefer to use the term masterful continuation which should please, not only their solid historical fan base but also a fairly large metal audience because 'Clear Cold Beyond' is certainly their most diverse studio recording since their beginning... | |
