SONATA ARCTICA — Reckoning Night (review)

SONATA ARCTICA — Reckoning Night album cover Album · 2004 · Power Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
topofsm
There are plenty of artists that can be used as great examples of "flower metal" when referring to upbeat, symphonic, and melodic metal. However, Sonata Arctica may as well be regarded as the posterboys of the sort of genre, and Reckoning Night is one of their most prominent examples. For sure, the album is great for getting that energetic power mood into you. In some respects it may be lacking, but plenty of the acts are good at putting that speedy, bright energy into you.

Such energy is apparent right from the start in "Misplaced", which doesn't even give a minute for build up by starting with fast paced drums, going into some quick power guitar lines and going into the speed. Like this song, many of the songs on this album are standard fare for power metal, very fast, with bright guitar lines. The production makes everything very accessible sounding, with the guitars never too distorted and on equal footing with the always melodic keyboard. The other more famous song on the album that matches this style is "Ain't Your Fairytale", which features an anthemic chorus and a pretty creative solo and bridge section with some cool keyboards.

That being said, there seems to be a wasted space on the album. After the rapid opener, the energy drops to a crawl with "Blinded No More", which is VERY slow to midtempo. It doesn't seem to carry much inspiration, and even the guitar solo seems there to fill some time. Half of the supposed epic "White Pearl, Black Ocean" seems to fit the bill for this, and the closing ballad "Shamandile" doesn't work too well either. I've stated often that one of power metal's flaws is that the best stuff is usually in the speedy over-the-top stuff, so what tends to happen is either an album of similar sounding tracks or a bunch of these speed metal songs intersperced with standard ballads.

As far as other tracks go, it's mostly back to the quick-paced power metal fare we should all be familiar with. "Wildfire" is a good standout, as the chorus is fairly angry for what Sonata Arctica usually gets by with. "The Boy Who Wanted to be a Real Puppet" is actually fairly interesting, with a prominent waltz-esque feel to it intersperced with that bright power feeling, something you don't hear every day. There's not much to complain about, but then again there's still not much there either. This tends to happen to power metal, and with very bright, soft varieties like these it has the unfortunate tendency completely lack bite.

That being said, Sonata Arctica definitely shows they are good musicians who have the ability to write some great songs. "Ain't Your Fairytale" is a standard they can be proud of, along with "Wildfire" and "The Boy Who wanted to be a Real Puppet". The rest of the album may hit snags here and there, but it's still a great album to "power out" too, and maybe play World of Warcraft or Dungeons and Dragons to.
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