Burned by Wintersun: Bye Sonata Arctica, for now

How many albums have to go wrong till I give up?
How many live shows should I see before I walk away?

My beloved band, Sonata Arctica is testing those borders, with every month. After giving it some though I decided to give it a break. And thank for all those years, wonderful lyrics, solos, vocals, melodies and drums. Tony, Jani, Marko and Tommy started a silly band that evolved not only into a Power Metal legend, but also my personal favourite over Stratovarius. I always respected Strato when I was younger but Sonata was able to deliver stratolike music in a form perfectly fit for younger me- richer lyrics, crazy solos, variety and more poppish, less serious form were perfect. And they hold up, first 5 albums are still as great as ~10 years ago.
I stayed loyal when haters were smashing Unia for proggish approach, I stayed loyal when Jani left and Elias joined the band, maybe because I knew his solo stuff before and was glad for him to get more popularity and release his album after joining Sonata. I stayed loyal with Days of Grays, even though I noticed that I don't really dig the direction they wanna go.
Finally, I accepted their decision to leave Power Metal and release Stones Grow Her Name (worst album name I've ever seen) and I liked the album anyway- I wasn't expecting Power Metal and what I got instead didn't disappoint me, it was weird but fun, and ended with 2 great, complex songs I didn't expect and I was truly amazed by them.
But in my eyes their approach to music changed recently, promised Power Metal on Pariah Child ended with watered down, simplistic and soft shit (when it comes to the instruments) and overly complicated, melody-breaking vocals + more inconsistent add ups than their previous, experimental albums. Love is the worst ballad I've ever heard, only Helloween can write pop love ballads that fit, Sonata should stay with Letter to Diana, Shy, Gravenimage, Misery, Tallulah, Under Your Tree, In The Dark, Today and others. And they release an album like that after the amazing Nemesis from Stratovarius? A band that makes power metal longer than them, had more difficult times, less fans and still manages to squeeze amazing albums like Polaris, Elysium and Nemesis?
Their live shows also changed, Elias and Tommy are giving their best, Pasi would love to but he didn't improve the always-lacking bass lines in Sonata songs so he can't give his best, Henkka is clearly bored on live shows and Tony.. I don't know if he's sick, has problems with vocals after so many years of overusing his voice or he just doesn't care anymore.

So I leave for now. I can't say that I don't care anymore because look at that ^ , clearly, I do care. I'm also not writing this for drama, as most of my older readers know- my blog is a shit from my brain I wanna have somewhere online to smile and laugh at when I'm older and dumber. And letting my chain of thought go- maybe I am a hipster? Maybe I don't like my favourite bands getting more popular? Maybe I'm just too old for this stuff. Anyway, I leave for now, turn my head to new Stratovarius and maybe Cain's Offering tour. I will look back (and probably buy) their next release to check if I dig it. If not I will say my last farewell, and put them next to Dio and Charon on my shelf.