Review Summary: Oh my god! This is an abomination, Oh my god! This is an abomination, Oh my god! This is an abomination...
Maybe I must send a letter to Sonata Arctica, because what they are basically doing is digging their own grave. After Ecliptica everything Sonata Arctica put out was rather average. Not bad, but there were some stinkers in every album. Their biggest mistake was to influence themselves by progpower metal bands. They try to much to sound "menacing" and "true" but end up sounding uncomfortable and downright annoying. Take Broken for example, from Winterheart's Guild. The first half of the "riff" consists of 4 power chords. 3 of them sound nice, leading towards a rather hopeful last chord, but it never comes. Instead of that we get a chord that is completely uncalled for. Maybe that's a way of sounding prog, but it still sucks. So much trying to be prog ruins an otherwise standard, but great collection of chords (I don't call it a riff...). This keeps happening a lot. Everything past Ecliptica, their only truly good record (guess why...), has the obvious prog metal songs that suck. Silence had The Power of One and The End of this Chapter. Winterheart's Guild had Abandoned, Pleased, Brainwashed, Exploited. A song that could have been great if it weren't for the uncalled for random notes spread through some standard power metal chord progressions. Reckoning Night even crossed that barrier with practically every song having stupid prog influences; Shamandalie and Ain't your Fairytale being the only songs it actually sounded good.
Unia actually happened to go any further. Good riddance on breaking the record and twisting my mind completely. I already had no clue why those random chords where thrown in otherwise great songs. Now I even doubt their personalities. First I just thought they did it so that people would label them progressive. With Unia they sort of self-proclaimed their "progressive" side, as if it is anything near a compliment. Composing long songs with stupid names may seem progressive. Just as it is the case with completely dismissing the guitar. Yeah, maybe there is a reason to go totally atonal just to question the listener WHY the hell that happened (and HOW the CD can be turned off). But being progressive doesn't come that easy. Yeah, go to wikipedia to find sources saying that they have going totally progressive with this record. Could be that, or adding a few minutes of extra nonsense and turning the guitar volume down is just downright stupid. It's not as if they want it that way? Don't they? Well, it seems as if they believe in theirselves. That's good, but those melodramatic tones are just useless. Turn on Virgin Steele's Emelaith to hear something dramatic. Compared tot that song this is as emotional as nails scratching a chalkboard, not to mention the fact that Emelaith has guitar playing all through the song. There are some moments of joy, usually when the guitar kicks in. Not because the guitar is doing the right thing, but because the sound finally sounds somewhat stronger.
You see, there is this such thing called melody. In the early days Sonata Arctica knew what it was and how to handle it. With Unia they managed to create an hearable abyss. The teeth-grinding crap that only proves that there can't be anything divine watching and controlling us. 90 Percent of the time the guitar gives of a perfect blend of mallcore and power metal. Perfect not in the sense that it is anything good, but more that 50 percent is mallcore. And not even the good kind of mallcore with the fun singalong choruses, but anything Korn related. Sometimes the guitar goes into a groove orientated riff. Nothing near to good power metal style, but it's a start. There are even some times, usually just before or after a guitar solo, when the guitar provides us with a nice high-fret melody. Sadly it is as rare as Cookie Monster consuming a salad. It comes over as dark, but not the brooding dark. It's the disturbing dark, as if you're trying to find the toilet without turning on the lights. Ironically, the guitar isn't used as much. Hell, buy the time I've finished this talk about the guitar, more than half of the time I had no guitar to concentrate on. For the Sake of Revenge for example could be a great song. Could be.. As in, it's not. It's pretty decent, but there are too many moments without a guitar, while the guitar was definitely needed over there. There are 5 people in the band, so use them!
The most prominent instrument is, surprise surprise, the keyboard. Just as ironic as the guitar, though completely the other way around, the keyboard is practically useless. Usually it serves as a one-two note melody stretched over several beats, as if it wants to give away the chords used there. On the other hand, there are some times where the keyboard uses a twinklestar like sound (Use a Yamaha keyboard and it's under Crystal). This, again, serves no purpose as it's filling up every space provided with seemingly random notes fitting whatever chord is being used. It's a Children of Bodom thing to do, creating melodies without substance, and even they didn't got away with it, Sonata Arctica even less. Whenever it get's even more dramatic, a piano sound is provided. It's probably the best out of three, and aside from its dreadful reason to use it, it's quite good. More than on one occasion it creates the feeling that the band is complete, even though it's obviously untrue. The keys and the guitars seem to contribute little to no good to the sound, but it is not as backed up as the bass and the drum. The drums in Sonata Arctica, or this kind of power metal for that matter, has never been outstanding. But here it even ceases to bring up any power. Usually it's the slowish drumbeat I'm trying to learn my 12 year old student, and usually it stays that way for too long. Not that it's substancial for a good record to have outstanding drums. It's just too typical and ironic to bring a smile on my face. Just as is the bass, which is quite nonexistant. Again, that's usually the way, but it doesn't help anyways. Complete that with the rather annyoing vocals and everything is complete. Speaking of the vocals, it's the best thing of the band. The accent is annoying, the lyrics are made up by 15 year old girly boys in rehad (or anything else that's basically bad, for that matter) and the vocal lines are usually way to monotone. Aside from that, some vocal lines are complex, and the dude behind the mic has some great vocal range.
But...
At the moment I'm listening to the intro of My Dream's but a blablabla... And I can't think of what's more painful. The song or my bruised leg from Snowboarding. Honestly, if there was an award of a combination of fake emotion and pseudo progressive, this song would win by a landslide. It's all so freshly done, as nobody ever stepped this low, but at the same time so typical. The "emotional" piano, the high clean vocals hitting notes Mozart played ages ago. Again something typical, the hysterical orchestration parts. As if any orchestra that comes with metal should be pompous, pretentious and devoid of any musical technicallity other than playing fast. Many of the songs come over as this. Not exact the same way of sucking, but in a somewhat camouflaged way. Good Enough is Good Enough is a horrible way to end the album. It ends on a soft tone, and because of its lack of anything that raises my heart beat it's very boring. Some piano noodling, some vocal noodling. Ends softly fading away, coming back for no reason and ends again softly fading away. This may be meant as emotionally, moving and epic, but it's not. I probably don't need to tell what adjectives do come up, it's the usual cliché thing to do. There is also Fly with the Black Swan. A name which reminds me of On the Wings of Tonight from Virgin Steele but lacks the coolness. Its way to add the "heavy" guitar playing seems like a way to creat a wall-like feeling. Something that doesn't work at all. It's not epic, it's not menacing, it's not brooding. There are way too many unnecesery notes and structure choices. It doesn't make sense. Not in the way of Gorguts's Obscura, but in the way of why the hell is Metallica metal's fronting band even though they abandoned metal 20 years ago. There are more disappointing songs. In fact, the only songs that are at about average or decent are For the Sake of Revenge, Caleb and The Harvest. The first lacks guitar and features annoying vocal accents/lyrics, but has a tremendous chorus. Caleb and The Harvest are average, but finally feature some old-school Sonata Arctica influences, which is despite its average-ness still beter than this piece of junk.
Sonata Arctica didn't abandoned all metalness on this record. And if they did, that's not an excuse for releasing this piece of crap. I do believe however that they can redeem itself. They still have a tiny bit of power metal awesomeness a la Ecliptica hidden somewhere in their body. Supressed by the viruses of commercial music. Now we can only hope their bodies are strong enough to conquer those bloody viruses, which is also a stab of their loss of power. Because if they can live through their illness, they can release another power metal album. Many people happy to have a great record, me happy with a decent record. I guess that's how It would happen. But, just like JD's daydreams of Scrubs, it probably doesn't happen. And why blame them. They like what they do, they earn money with it. It's how every metal band wants to end, with earning enough from it to quit any crappy job. Still, for some dramatic power metal I recommend Virgin Steele. They may have about 30 times fewer plays on Lastfm, but their quality is 90 times better. That's what I suggest you to do, just check them out. If you like them, good for you and good for Virgin Steele. If not, well good for you, and I think Sonata Arctica probably don't even care. They've got enough fans anyways.
