Artist: Sonata Arctica
Title: “First In Line” (Single)
Label: Reigning Phoenix Music
Date: 10/13/2023
Rating: 4/5
It’s been a few years since the Metal world has been able to enjoy new music from Finland’s Sonata Arctica and since their 2019 release of “Talviyö” and there’s been one dramatic change that I didn’t expect to see happening. Now before you worry about a lineup change or a re-jiggering of their musical focus let me say please calm down, the change comes by way of the band moving on from Nuclear Blast Records after seven full-length albums and a fifteen year tenure and onto the Reigning Phoenix Music label. While I am unaware of what brings such changes to a bands mindset, I am completely excited to hear new material and the first single off of their upcoming album is a track called “First In Line”. The number starts off by spotlighting their always smiling drummer Tommy Portimo who just lays down some skills before the keys of Henkka kick into gear. I’ll have to say that right off the bat that I felt this was an exciting track and something that I’ve come to expect from Sonata Artica who I’ve been following along with since I first heard “Winterheart’s Guild”. Before I continue along, if you’re someone who hasn’t yet heard that album please do yourself a favor and order a copy right after you finish reading our summary about this track.
Singer Tony Kakko comes across as being on the biggest of stages and delivers a very dramatic performance vocally and what I mean by this is that as the song played through I could completely envision him singing to the masses assembled in front of him while the rest of the band did their thing around him. Henkka gets a brief solo before Elias takes his turn and through it all bassist Pasi keeps it together. I enjoyed this one so much that I blasted it a few more times before offering up my brief thoughts on it. For me this was a super impressive introduction to their upcoming album and it leaves me with the hopes that the rest of it will be as kick ass as this debut single. My hope is that the release also finds the band returning to touring in our sector since they haven’t been here since 2019 and then the pandemic happened and kept so many bands from visiting for far too long. That’s all I’ve got on this one but it was so satisfying that after I press “publish” I’ll be playing it once again.
Official: https://sonataarctica.info/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sonataarctica
