Let's start by showing how the summary of the last album went:
This is a perfect summary of my relation to that band. I probably won't see it live again, but who knows. I won't trust them to deliver good music as well. But for now I smile, the music is better than it was, and who knows? It might be a new start.
So let's see how my 'new start' went after past 3 years of having a love-hate relationship with Sonata Arctica. Will it be our last amazing grays or should they don't say a word again? Let's jump in with the first track on the album Message from the Sun
Wow, semi fast tempo was something I didn't expect from them anymore. Positive, magical vibes of the song are taken down by absolute lack of power in the vocals, hidden behind multi-layered lines that suggest it's a song where the audience sings along in order to hide Tony's declining skill in singing. Lyrics are solid but there are some strange decisions (for example the outro cuts rather weakly with Glow, the meaning divine of the rhymes in the snow. )
The sound is absolute plastic, it starts rather strong with a slower intro but with each second I think more and more "why do they need guitars in that music anymore? Elias's parts are treated like shit". Solo in the 2/3 of the songs starts weak like hell, I needed to play it again since I already forgot how forgettable it was.
Overall a bad start, tiny bit better than Closer to an Animal from the last album, but there Tony sounded more interested in what he's singing. A pity, it had potential to be a bridge between Winterheart's Guild and Unia's Sonata eras with a handful of ideas taken from both of these albums but the mixing and weak vocals ruined this opportunity.
Whirlwind is a second track and the intro part sounds rather interesting (just like with the last song) for the first 50 second, then the tone shifts by 180 degrees. And after a few minutes more we finally have a good Sonata song. Ok, time to explain.
It shows how important is a vocalist puting some emotions and effort in a song- it's clearly hearable he's more invested here. Thematically it's a mix between Broken and Only The Broken Hearts (Make You Beautiful) , the structure (excluding the intro) is very right and the song progresses nicely.
You can hear someone who is during the healing process, being both optimistic for the recovery and struggling during the winter times (which adds to the winter night tone of the album).
It's good, but I cannot say "omg they NAILED IT!". First of all the production is still far from perfect, I don't think I need to explain, it's been a bigger or smaller issue since Pariah Child. Second- the intro- from the moment electric guitars enter it doesn't fit the motive at all, or I'm not understanding something right. Then the tone of the song is all around- the 'happy' parts are just too happy (Tony is almost TOO invested in sounding happy, he could channel it to the previous song) and transition to the sadder parts could be made less abrupt. Instrumental parts with the previously not fitting electric guitar don't help set the climate either.
The outro also struggles during the 4:55 - 5:22 part with some weird ideas and repetitions.
Cold is third and I heard it before on Youtube. Album's quality is much better but it doesn't help with 2 things - Tony's bored and uninvested singing and very slow tempo. Multiple comments on youtube were right that this songs sounds quite decent on 1,25 tempo.
I think the worst part is transition to a (finally) decent guitar solo, the vocals just don't give a shit. To a point where I remember George Carlin's quote about God:
So, if there is a God, I think most reasonable people might agree that he's at least incompetent, and maybe, just maybe, doesn't give a shit. Doesn't give a shit! Which I admire in a person, and which would explain a lot of these bad results.”
Tony doesn't give a shit here, his album will still sell enough copies to have a living, there will still be enough fangirls and "Sonata come to Chile" people in the comments plus some delusionals that will read sponsored by Nuclear Blast album reviews saying "hey Sonata is back with their best album yet!". When you are burned out and don't need to push yourselves to do better then why should you?
I digress, back to the review, Cold is shit that again- could be a lot better with a very little effort, move on to Storm the Armada
Now this one is pretty interesting- Tony's invested in singing again BUT the production pushed him behind everything, his vocals here are so behind that I think most of them are in the booklet.
There are some quirks connected to that, like his someway in 2:31 being more audible than the rest of the lyrics which sounds really bizzare, like a novice mistake on a mixing table, unfit for 10th fucking album from them.
This song is all around the place, I had no idea what are they trying to say with multiple instrumental parts, tone shifts and lyrics about seemingly just random shit but the ending is clearing out the message- THE BEES
It's weird and I don't like it, moving on, maybe like Zeroes I will start to like it after multiple listens but probably not because Zeroes had a decent audio engineering behind it.
The Last of the Lambs. LISTENING TO THIS SONG IS PAIN, MORE THAN NICHOLAS CAGE ABOVE IS FACING. MOVING THE FUCK ON. DON'T LISTEN TO IT, GET A SOFTWARE THAT CAN ERASE TRACK 5 FROM THE CD OR SOME SHIT.
Who Failed The Most - You did Sonata, a few seconds ago releasing the worst song since Love and following with a bland, badly mixed, too slow piece with Tony's bored vocals. This song is not worth talking more about it, it barely has any redeeming values.
Ismo's Got Good Reactors - best song on the album. Why? No vocals. Therefore harder to fuck up the mixing. Interesting riffs and nice fast tempo with some uplifting, even oriental melodies.
Maybe consider kicking Tony out of the band? It looks like he's the weakest part of the band nowadays. The story behind the song's name is also quite fun.
Demon's Cage . Ok, first of all how dare you mention the "C" word here, The Cage was and is an amazing song from the Sonata's best, flawless era and this is .. A lot of repetition, a lot of experimentation that absolutely fucks the dynamic of the song- there is no flow, some vocals are written by an idiot. It's just hard to listen to, after 3 minutes I struggle to pay attention to it.
I wonder why they repeat the same melodic line, it's not that good really..
A Little Less Understanding is a little less bad, but also a little more disappointing since it was the first song of the album shown to the public and it wasn't anything amazing. Turns out it was one of the "good" songs on the album with Tony's soft voice being kinda invested in singing, there are no dumb experiments and just a lot of repetition (but the melody is nicer so it's.. ok?).
I have a little less understanding what they wanted to say with this album, maybe "we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel on this one, in 3 years we really couldn't think of anything better". Oh, and the most cheesy solo is here, in the worst meaning of the word.
The Raven Still Flies is a story, I think. I'm not sure. Probably something written on the back of the album package
...
So as I was saying something on the back of the album package
I hope You know.. I hope You know
No Tony I have no idea what you want to say with this song.
During the instrumental part I'm really lost, it's just another experimentation song, something that should never exit the demo phase. Something that Devin Townsend thinks of in the middle of the night and puts on Youtube as "thought leftovers" with some very disturbing images on a Youtube video. God I digress so bad but this album is just so bland, boring, meaningless and THE LAST SONG, HERE WE FUCKING GO!
Some Galneryus break to recharge batteries, phew, The Garden
Just 6 minutes, after painfully stretched last songs, I can do it! Oh it's like a ballad I think, soft and calm, like observing a cold winter wind behind a window of a warm room under a blanket with a cup of cocoa in a hand.
At least that what I was hoping for, in time it's just too boring, too long and too sweet, to a point where I start worrying about diabetes. I'll give it a pass.
Ok, so I think I need to write a summary now.
It's bad. Is it Pariah Child bad? I don't know, it's like comparing cat shit to dog shit, in the end it doesn't matter which is worse since both are shit.
Why are there 11 songs on this album? Couldn't they skip a few and call it a day? It might have helped with some of the problems but in the end we have 2 good songs, 4 bland but passable and 5 bad/boring ones. The worst part is that you cannot blame shit audio engineering and bored vocals for all the problems here. That and that we waited 3 years and the band wasn't particulary active in that time so they cannot justify bad writing with little time they had to come up with something for this album.
I really don't want to talk about this cd anymore so;
Vocals: 2/10
Guitars: 3/10
Keyboards: 6/10
Drums: 8/10
Bass: Just fuck you Pasi/10
Additional:
+ There is one song that has that Sonata feeling. I really appreciate it, it made me for a minute feel young again.
--- mixing
-- vocalist sounds like he doesn't want to be there more often than not
- a lot of experimentation that shouldn't appear on a final product
- everything out of touch, out of place, all bloated, too long, not necessary. It just lacks essence and message.
- major disappointment after the previous album which had it's moments
Final score: 24% oh how the mighty have fallen, hopefully it's the last one or they will have a major reinventing afterwards because this album is broken. As the song with that title says Once again hope I died for the last time
