SONATA ARCTICA have a reputation for being one of Finland’s classic great (power) metal bands, regardless of how you feel about their ongoing career. Their newest album, “Clear Cold Beyond,” came out in the spring of 2024, which made it all the more interesting to reflect on their older material, such as “Reckoning Night,” which was released on September 22nd, 2004, and is often (particularly in Finland) considered SONATA ARCTICA‘s unbeatable masterpiece. As such, we had to go through and give it another listen to see how it holds up after 20 years!
“Reckoning Night” was the band’s fourth studio album and was the first to feature Henrik Klingenberg on keyboards, who is such an established member that it’s hard to imagine the band ever existed without him at this point. This also means that the ever-unsmiling but talented Marko Paasikoski was still on bass at that time and Jani Liimatainen was still taking care of guitars and adding some great solos into the mix!
The album starts with a couple of traditional SONATA ARCTICA power metal bangers: “Misplaced,” which is fast, upbeat, and catchy as hell – a perfect single – while “Blinded No More” slows it down a tad, adding some more dynamic push to the interesting lyrics. Then, “Ain’t No Fairytale” is one of those traditional speedy power metal tracks that throws back to the early days of “Ecliptica” and “Silence,” which surely delights the classic fans who love them when they fly at top speeds. Frankly, it’s just outright catchy, with a fun twiddly guitar solo by Liimatainen.
“Reckoning Day, Reckoning Night” is the closest thing the album has to a title track, which is interesting because it’s an instrumental interlude that could almost count as an intro to “Don’t Say a Word” per how nicely they flow together. “Don’t Say a Word,” incidentally, might very well be one of SONATA ARCTICA‘s best songs and is certainly one of their best live tracks for its awesome energy. Part of the notorious “Caleb saga,” this song is appropriately creepy and wonderful. I’ve always loved the line, “I place a black candle on your chest / the path of night is manifest”… Tony Kakko truly has written some of the best and worst lines I’ve ever read, which results in me being quite fond of him in general, just because of the polarity of quality (yes, we all remember that line from the previous album, “when lightning stroke me” and his unfortunate recent use of “dices”). This song also boasts one of Liimatainen‘s greatest solos, which Elias Viljanen (the band’s current guitarist) has claimed he always tries to play note-for-note because of how great it is, rather than making it his own.
When I was much, much, much younger, “The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Real Puppet” honestly kind of scared me conceptually. The song makes for a fantastic horror story that’s a twist on the usual Pinocchio tale, centered around greed… a cautionary tale of sorts, and it’s great. Despite the fact that this song disturbing me greatly, I’ve always enjoyed it and it still holds up some 20 years later! Those driving guitar lines, the tinkling keyboards, and Kakko‘s lovely voice really tie the whole thing together.
“My Selene” is an upbeat and fun love song, with a really catchy chorus, pretty straightforward but nevertheless effective. “Wildfire” is a strange song with an ambient, spoken-word intro that creates an ominous soundscape before the fiery power metal guitars and drums kick in. This is a pretty ferocious song for these guys, which is surely why power metal lovers are such fans of this one.
However, it’s “White Pearl, Black Oceans” that gets all the Finnish crowds to fall into their often-hidden emotions. While “Tallulah” is the de facto SONATA ARCTICA song that Finns cry over, this is the song they often cite as the band’s true greatest achievement. This melancholic piece has never particularly struck me, beyond my noting that it’s a very well-crafted song, so I had to ask some Finns how they felt about it and Simo K. said that, “‘White Pearl, Black Oceans‘ is melancholy yet brave, epic but tender, and full of the feeling of a grandiose adventure with majestic scenery opening before you.” Indeed, even if the song doesn’t particularly tickle me, there’s no denying the truth of all that – it has a delicate balance of simple and complex rhythms, with delicate changes in rhythm and tempo that never cross into the range of over-complicated polyrhythms, and it’s true that it’s easy to listen to… it’s not a song that should really cause you reason to skip it when enjoying the album, thus it feels really inoffensive in that sense. Another friend, who also helped me with some of the above insights, called it akin to great songs like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Ghost Love Score,” and “Stairway to Heaven” – a hefty boast, but not one that I’d challenge.
Following this, we have one of my all-time top favorite ballads. Funny how that works, as I generally am not a big ballad-lover. As mentioned before, Kakko has always been one of those guys who dances between abysmal Finglish and some of the most profoundly magical and deep lines I’ve ever heard, and “Shamandalie” falls under the latter category. Ignoring the music altogether, the song tells an extremely relatable tale of (at least what I’ve always thought was) a friendship that turned romantic, which unfortunately resulted in the loss thereof. Kakko sounds genuinely devastated throughout the song as the character mourns the loss of the friendship, wondering if they never should have tried at all. Funnily enough, I generally oppose the idea of not trying because you might ruin the friendship (you’ll stay friends if you want to stay friends), but this song is the outright argument in the other direction. This is the bad outcome of dating your best friend and it’s heartbreaking. It’s so unfortunate that the Spotify version of this song has “Wrecking the Sphere,” which is a fun acoustic jam-out Japanese bonus track attached to the end of it… it tends to ruin the vibe of this song, especially in ballad playlists.
On the whole, I can’t disagree that this album is a masterpiece, though I wouldn’t call it their crowning achievement, as I would rather split that title between several of their releases. It does certainly host quite a few of the band’s top-ever songs though, which could be reason enough to grant it that title if you were so inclined. Either way, I think this album absolutely stands the test of time and holds up as well in 2024 as it did in 2004 (or at least 2006ish when I discovered it).
Written by Bear Wiseman
Tracklist
- Misplaced
- Blinded No More
- Ain’t Your Fairytale
- Reckoning Day, Reckoning Night
- Don’t Say a Word
- The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Real Puppet
- My Selene
- Wildfire
- White Pearl, Black Oceans
- Shamandalie
Lineup
Tony Kakko – vocals
Jani Liimatainen – guitars
Henrik Klingenberg – keyboards
Marko Paasikoski – bass
Tommy Portimo – drums
Nik Van-Eckmann – spoken-word vocal parts
