Only about a week anymore till Finnish melodic metal icons Sonata Arctica will release their new acoustic album »Acoustic Adventures Volume One«.

“After SONATA ARCTICA hit the road in 2016 to premiere their marvellously crafted acoustic set to a stunned audience and then again in 2019, the idea was born to immortalise these intimate, pure, and heartfelt renditions of their iconic catalogue on two acoustic albums, the second of which will follow in close succession. “The fans truly seemed to enjoy this side of the band quite much so there was clearly a demand to record these versions of our music.” Having said that, such a release was only a matter of time, anyway: at the very heart of every SONATA ARCTICA song lies a sublime melody, wreathed in melancholy. “We originally planned to record these songs in Los Angeles at a friend’s studio but since most of our touring seized we decided to do the recordings a bit sooner,”

Remembers keyboarder Henrik “Henkka” Klingenberg

They did a great job transporting the same intimate atmosphere of the previous acoustic tours and perfectly capture it on record. If I close my eyes, I can easily imagine being back at a concert venue or maybe a campfire. They proved that they don’t need much to transport their trademark sound. And they didn’t simply switch electric guitars with acoustic ones, but instead wrote whole new arrangements and therefore had some songs differ very much from their original version, all of them still sound a 100% like Sonata Arctica.

“Not all of the stuff we tried worked out which is why some songs were not recorded. Luckily we have quite a large collection to choose from so there’s really no shortage of material.”

Henkka says

The only thing I’m personally kinda disappointed about, is that only 2 of the 12 songs haven’t been heard before in acoustic versions. I hoped for some more, especially as Sonata Arctica has more than enough songs to choose from, but maybe we get those on the second part of the »Acoustic Adventures«.

While ‘A Little Less Understanding’ with banjo and organ has a bit too much going on in my opinion, the songs that stand out most for me are the more simple ones like ‘For The Sake Of Revenge’ and my long-time favourite ‘Tonight I Dance Alone’. What I also enjoyed a lot is how versatile the album still is. ‘Paid In Full’ has a wild Wild West atmosphere going on, while I could easily imagine this version of ‘Don’t Say a Word’ in an old Bond movie.

Really impressive is also that Tony Kakko, in all those years hasn’t lost any bit of his voice. In ‘Tallulah’, for example, you can hear him sounding just about the same as in the original version from 11 years ago. That’s definitely something that can not be said about all singers of famous (metal) bands.

Overall I’m pretty sure that every fan of Sonata Arctica will find something they like on this album and I’m also really looking forward to the next part of this chapter of Sonata Arctica. Hopefully then with some more songs that we haven’t heard in an acoustic rendition yet.

Release Date: January 21, 2022
Label: Atomic Fire
Tracklist:

1. The Rest Of The Sun Belongs To Me
2. For The Sake Of Revenge
3. A Little Less Understanding
4. Alone In Heaven
5. Tallulah
6. Don’t Say a Word
7. As If The World Wasn’t Ending
8. Paid In Full
9. Tonight I Dance Alone
10. The Wolves Die Young
11. Wolf & Raven
12. On The Faultline

SONATA ARCTICA are:
Tony Kakko | vocals & keyboards
Elias Viljanen | guitars
Pasi Kauppinen | bass
Henrik “Henkka” Klingenberg | keyboards
Tommy Portimo | drums

SONATA ARCTICA online:
www.sonataarctica.info
www.facebook.com/sonataarctica
www.instagram.com/sonataarcticaofficial
www.twitter.com/sonataarctica
www.youtube.com/sonataarctica
https://label.atomicfire-records.com/project/sonata-arctica/