Sonata Arctica - "Clear Cold Beyond"
The clear cold beyond, where my love for this band has gone
Sonata Arctica are one of the oldest and most influential acts in Power Metal. For a long time, they were one of my absolute favorites. Period. End of story. Their only competition was Blind Guardian and Dream Theater.
Since Clear Cold Beyond is their first release since 2019’s Talviyö, I haven’t had much chance to really discuss this band. So, as I typically like to do when covering an act who has not yet appeared on this platform, I’ll begin by diving into the band’s background and discussing their place in the genre, along with relevant details which affect my review.
I’m including the use of a couple of headers so that you can scroll down to the actual review if you aren’t interested in my half-educational rant.
Background
Sonata got their start in the mid-90s as, believe it or not, Tricky Beans. At the very start, they were just a drummer (Tommy Portimo) and two guitarists (Jani Liimatainen and Marko Paasikoski); by the end of 1995, they added vocalist Tony Kakko and bassist Pentti Peura. Of this original five-piece lineup, only three (Portimo, Liimatainen, and Kakko) stayed through the early years as the band rebranded to Tricky Means, and then finally to Sonata Arctica. Their debut album, Ecliptica, released in 1999.
Like all bands, they took a little time to really settle into their sound, and there was an incredible sense of growth and improvement through their first four releases, despite that it was all packed into five short years. In 2007, Sonata released their fifth album, Unia, with a significant stylistic shift which met with a mixed response.1 Immediately after the album was complete, however, Liimatainen was forced to leave the band.2 A new guitarist was brought in, and two years later the band released The Days of Grays, an album very similar to Unia, but not quite its equal.
Kakko has always been the band’s chief songwriter. That hasn’t changed. But the composition of the tracks was more collaborative, and without Liimatainen’s influence, the band’s quality sunk sharply. 2012’s Stones Grow Her Name was awful, and every album since has languished in mediocrity as the band floundered as they attempted to redefine themselves. On recent albums, including Clear Cold Beyond, this has taken the shape of a band trying to reconnect with their roots.
You might ask, though, why I’m so confident in pinning the band’s decline on their loss of Liimatainen — he was only one member out of five. But in 2022, Jani Liimatainen released a solo album called My Father’s Son. It’s an eclectic, but incredible journey through melodic metal styles, anchored in Power where Liimatainen is most comfortable. The second track on the album, “All Dreams Are Born to Die”, features Kakko as a guest vocalist, and it immediately sounds like old Sonata Arctica.
Review
Moving on, though, Clear Cold Beyond kicks off with what its predecessor lacked severely — energy. Talviyö was pretty, but it was slow and meloncholic basically start-to-finish.3 The aptly-named opener, “First in Line”, kicks Clear Cold Beyond off with a fast-paced Power Metal anthem which is strongly reminiscent of Sonata’s first two albums. With the re-release of Ecliptica, that approach had to be fresh in their minds, so it really seems like the band is studying their roots and trying to get back there to some degree.
Not only do they succeed, in some measure, stylistically, but they also mimic the poor lyricism and bad English grammar of those early releases — something I thought Sonata had moved beyond long ago.
Despite how bad “First in Line” isn’t, it still has its issues, namely the basic melody, and the stiff composition. This latter element carries over to most of the rest of the songs on the album. See, the thing that made Sonata Arctica excellent was how deep their compositions were. Every line in the song feels like its doing its own thing, but it’s also seamlessly working in harmony with every other line, whether that’s guitar and keys or bass and vocals; mix and match however you like, Sonata’s compositions in their heyday were damn near faultless.
Here, though, we have the intro to “Shah Mat” using keyboard layering to kick off the song, and every layer sounds like it belongs in a different track. Then it feels like the various lines are basically all standing in the exact same space, musically, tripping over each other because it’s just such a narrow composition with brief glimpses of what it could truly be. Then, “Cure For Everything takes basically the same guitar, bass, and percussion lines from “First in Line” and probably two other songs and drops them on top of mediocre vocals.
“On top of” is crucial phrasing here, because the mixing on the album is frustrating, at best. The vocal melody in “California” is bland, sure, but it certainly doesn’t help that it’s barely audible because it’s absolutely buried under blander riffs.
As much as I love Tony Kakko as a vocalist, his age is starting to show in his voice. It’s nowhere near as nimble and expressive as it used to be. That much is evident in several tracks, but most notably in “Angel Defiled”, which happens to be one of the better compositions on the album, and Kakko’s lackluster vocals make it fall somewhat flat.
Other outlets (I’ve read two reviews, each giving this album an 8/10) have claimed that Sonata is really showing their chops on this album. But they aren’t, on the whole. As a former fanboy, I know what these guys are capable of. But I guess this is what happens when you get old.
None of this is to say they don’t still have talent. Clear Cold Beyond still has bright spots. Moments that try to keep that flame of hope alive.
Take “Dark Empath”, for example. It’s one of their better songs here, and a single. The mixing and production are better, and the composition fires on almost all cylinders. The biggest complaint I have is that it honestly isn’t dark enough for what it is — the next chapter in The Caleb Saga. This is a set of, now, seven songs, across their entire discography, which are linked to tell a continuous story. The link above leads to a playlist with all seven songs in order.
Finally, I also need to talk about the title track, “Clear Cold Beyond”, which also closes the album. It is the best track here, with the best mixing. The melody here, most notably, feels like it was created for this song, instead of a catchy hook that was shoehorned in, as much of the rest of the album’s melodies seem to be. It’s one of only two slow songs on the album (the other being “The Best Things”, which immediately precedes it), but it’s rich and intense.
Sonata is still capable. When they take the time. Or have the budget for proper mixing. I’m not sure what the bigger issue is here, but this album feels like the end of something:
Hope.
It’s been 15 years now since the last decent Sonata album released. All this time, I’ve held out hope that they would return to some measure of their former glory. At this point, I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Rating: Orange
Personally, Unia is one of my all-time favorite albums. I see it as the height of what the band grew into; fans who didn’t like the shift prefer Reckoning Night or Winterheart’s Guild, typically.
See Sonata Arctica’s official statement on the matter.
Even if it wasn’t, that’s all I really remember. The whole album was a pretty, but same-y, blur.