No Music No Civilization

Dark orange color with antique symbol with calligraphy-letters clearly suggest that this album contains maniacal heavy metal tracks. (man I suck at photography)

The CD design could be better… what the heck is plain purple for such a nice album jacket? (And yes, Sonata Arctica didn’t forget to put a wolf somewhere in the album as usual)

Members line up L-R: Henrik Kingenberg (keyboard), Marco Paasikoski (Guitar) Tony Kakko (Vocals), Tommy Portimo (Drums),  Jani (Bass)

Sonata Arctica is a Finnish band as it is noticeable from the names of the members. Finland has been famous for producing modern melodic artists that rock the world today. Sonata Arctica was formed in 1996, and had their latest album UNIA on May of 2007.

When UNIA was first published, it shocked all the listeners and fans. One of the album reviewers around the described it as “a grand experiment and a voyage of music.” He is perfectly right, Sonata Arctica is presenting songs of brand newer taste in their newest album Unia. Unia means ‘dreams’ in Finnish. And behind the album jacket, it says ‘Kauniita Unia,’ meaning ‘Sweet Dreams.’ Why would Sonata Arctica put such a cute name for a heavy metal track? I mean, why are they ’sonata’ in their name first of all?

Sonata Arctica values melody, harmony and music and that’s what tracks in Unia are all about. Especially in this album, most instrumental covers are the keyboards that levy the typical ‘heavy’ metal bands and therefore creating more ranges of audiences. Soft like a sonata, but as harsh as an arctic. However, ’sweet dreams’ wouldn’t sound too cool if the content of lyrics and overall mood of music were to be implied. The songs are mostly handling about ‘revenge’ and ‘thirst’ for justice or to thrash the haters. It is a sweet dream of prevail over another, which just doesn’t sound too sweet for the victim.

Those qualities are greatly shown in lyrics of In Black and White and Paid in Full. These songs are expressing the inevitable fight and hate in a romantic and brave way. The melodies of both tracks makes the listeners’ mind blow up. The sudden rise of notes and fast tempo in Black and white and loud, and slow rising, but fast and fastens our heartbeat. Listeners of these tracks usually feel that “[their] souls are compelled to escape from body because of the music.”

Lyrics like

“Now I will hit you where it hurts”,”I need a sign/ that you’re worth fighting for” and “It’s hard for me to love myself right now”

clearly shows the hidden hatred of the singer. These are the hatred toward the ultimate rival and enemy, or the evil superior force above the ’small’ singer. Also For the Sake of Revenge and track implies similar meaning, but the melody and tone is lot lighter. They talk about the same thing, how they are bonded in a skirmish between their enemies and before they finish their job, they have no time to do anything else. It’s a dream for eternal freedom and happiness.

Then the track Under Your Tree comes along, the saddest track in the album. Like the famous song of the Beatles “Hey Jude“ this song is talking about the loss of a beloved friend. The overall feeling of the song pictures of a person grieving heavily for the loss of a friend who lived short but is getting over it. The start of the song gives a gloomy images, but also it is encouraging.

“Did not want to see the signs of the dimming flame/ I thought we had more time”,” You have always liked this place/ it now belongs to you. I need to set you free/ and go on alone”

These lyrics itself are heart touching and tragic. The depressed character is mourning from the bottom of the heart. But when mixed with Sonata Arctica, it mixes a totally different taste: it is now about a man with bittersweet emotions bidding farewell to the deceased. A sense of nostalgia and scent of sweet past is well described; and indeed it is well mixed with the music.

After Under the Tree, the songs go more punk-ish. Sonata Arctica sings with more levity and more less-serious issues. Caleb reminds of parental control issues. There was a man named Caleb who never smiled because he had such horrible childhood because he had wronged parents. Caleb says in the lyric:

“Smiled at his funeral, “happy you’re dead.”"

Also this shows mother’s maternal love of correcting the only child at all costs and hopes, but Caleb’s childhood was already destroyed and nothing could cure it. This song sounds dark and lost, and maddened. The end is creative; the repeat of a first part with only instruments. This symbolizes the repeated chain of revenge and despair.

My Dream’s But a Drop of Fuel for a Nightmare is, really, a song about a person suffering from nightmare. Rather than the lyrics, this song should be valued more as in melody. It would have been very difficult to compose this song unless a genius did it. This is the masterpiece of counterpoint. This song managed to create a melody line of minor still sound as a major. And with the melody line being a minor, the base and supporting melody was able to go fast and noisy and still doesn’t disrupt the natural flow. This song really is about nightmares and doesn’t contain any other stuff.

“I can skating with a seal, the tarantula, the fly the broken ring
the dusty little flea
an ugly giant, a disappointed child”

Harvest is considered the best track of the album Unia according to various comments floating around the internet. This song is a satire of love, how love can corrupt us. Both lyrics and music match very well. This song is a masterpiece of mixture of thrash-death metal and usage of harmonious chords. Again, lyrics in this song are dazzling as well:

Plant a Flower of Love, care for it, water it,
Lounge in the shade of the stale champagne
A flower so fatal yet so beautiful
Showed the Bee where to fly
and then let it die

The world’s without virginity
The souls have no intergrity
The Word of grave old danger -Love
It’s all I’m after, oh
I am done…

Bring me to recovery
give it to me, I’m after tranquillity
I somehow lost my line of sight
Before I cast the final die…
Once planted plastic grapes,
The harvest of a lifetime
Real Bad Wine

Sonata Arctica had some sense to include some famous historical quotes. And nice imagery is shown here about love. Superior powers use love as a bait, and controls the employees at their services. A love can blind the lovers, and that makes easier for each other to hide in the shadow and be nasty. And the result of that relationship, obviously leads to a “real bad wine.”

Next final songs are rather quiet. I was personally quite exhausted after listening the album up to Harvest. Not only it took the long time, but all the songs were breathtaking. The World’s Forgotten, World’s Forbidden, Fly With The Black Swan, Good Enough Is Good Enough, They Follow, Out In The Fields all work as end credits. There is a similarity with in these songs; these songs play with metamorphosis of major and minor scales and they ignore the traditional structure of songs. Concepts for the lyrics are pretty much the same as the previous ones, except Good Enough Is Good Enough is a very sad love romantic song that would make certain people cry from the bottom of heart.

The tunes of the song is exotic, and ‘unheard’. It sounds like that first at least. Then the underdeveloped motif grows into a major movement of the songs. Those were experimented, and I call them a success.

Overall, none of the songs of Sonata Arctica are bad to hear. The songs mentioned are just the favorites. Before having in touch with these songs, no one could have thought that heavy metal could be so poetic and beautiful, yet keep the traditional characteristics of metal. They need to keep on producing musics like this or they are not Sonata Arctica. This album grants its listeners unia’s of a free life and will. And also living in a world of fierce competition, contents of the lyrics encourage us to work harder. Tony Kakko’s unique deep yet high voice and his composing skills are frantically admirable. UNIA is an archetype of the success of risky musical experiments with talents of five people accumulated. I (notice it’s my first time saying it in first-person form) could truly perceive the musical spirit, rage, passion and thirst they had. They obviously didn’t consider much about the market when making this music, but as members described themselves as ‘musical’ in their biographies, they were purely reflecting themselves like a mirror in a piece of CD now we call as Unia.

Photo credit: CD self-captured, Members photo by Toni Härkönen

Technorati Tags: Sonata Arctica, Unia, Metal, Finland

Filed under: Anibal's Diary, Melo-Metal, Music Theory, Surreal