LIVE REPORT: Sonata Arctica

live reportmusic review
Written By Bear Wiseman

Clear Cold Beyond Tour
Kulttuuritalo, Helsinki; March 23rd, 2024

I’ve been covering Sonata Arctica for over 10 years now, so it goes without saying that I’ve seen them once, twice, maybe several times. My coverage has been fairly extensive, so much so, in fact, that I’ll link my past articles down below (↓), but suffice to say, I’ve been enjoying this band and their music since before I moved to Finland. They have certainly had their high and low points over the years, but as an iconic band in Finland, it’s always worth paying attention to what they’re up to. Not to be held back by their sluggish and forgettable release from 2019, Sonata Arctica really kicked up the energy for “Clear Cold Beyond,” as I noticed at the pre-listening session in Helsinki, which meant that checking out the album release tour—in this case, the show at Helsinki’s House of Culture [Kulttuuritalo] on March 23rd, 2024—was mandatory (though we sadly missed out on Kiuas’ show at On the Rocks because of it). 

Also, do check out the Off the Record Interview with Tommi Portimo and Elias Viljanen from the pre-listening, which talks about a lot of their history over the years!

The opener of the night was Temple Balls, who are a band that I’ve had zero luck catching live… ever. The last time I was meant to see them was at the last Helsinki Psych Fest a few years ago, but they were one of the late-night headliners and I had to head home before their showtime. Alas, the curse continues, as we were so late getting to town that even with their late starting time, we were only able to catch the end of their last song… well, perhaps next time? 

Indeed, it seemed that the showtimes had been pushed back, with Sonata Arctica’s listed time being 21.00, but apparently most places online updated the day of the show to say that it was pushed to 21.20. When the time came, Hans Zimmer’s “One Day” acted as the intro track… I’m torn between always being happy to hear some good Pirates of the Caribbean music to get me going, but the flipside of that is that Pirates music has also been used by a million other bands already, so it has kind of been done, you know? Well, let’s not nit-pick too soon…

The show kicked off with some new material, with “First in Line” and “Dark Empath” working nicely to get the crowd amped up for some new tracks, while also freshening up their set a bit, followed by the (fortunately) only “Talviyö” track, “Storm the Armada,” which is probably the best song from that release. Tony was making some very cheesy faces during the cheesiest parts of “Dark Empath,” which suggests to me that he’s being a bit tongue-in-cheek and having fun playing around with everyone. Worth mentioning, he was chatting with the crowd a bit between songs, but the man sounded like he had slammed twelve cups of coffee right before the show or something because he was chittering like an auctioneer at such a pace that even my Finnish friends said they couldn’t understand anything he was saying.

“Among the Shooting Stars” and “Angel Defiled” had the best lights of the night and though the crowd was basic-Finnish (AKA not doing all that much), there was at least one guy who had ripped his shirt off and started jumping up and down. It was also nice to see Tony messing around with the vocal lines and having fun in the older songs. “Broken” was an amazing call-back to “Reckoning Night” and an easy highlight since it hasn’t been heard live in a good long while. It’s a shame that the sound was a bit shaky on the floor, as I was hearing a bit of reverb throughout the night and Tony’s vocals weren’t always very audible in the mix.

I also simply must admit that “I Have a Right” sounded okay this time. It began with a crowd-singalong and I felt like they dressed up the music a bit, which made it less painfully boring than usual… oh no, am I complacently learning to accept that this song is going to always be on their setlists after complaining about it nonstop since 2012? Oh dear me… Furthermore, Tony was really ripping it up during “Tallulah” and nowadays I find it most fun to get into the spirit of that song and sing along with all the Finns as they weep and hold one another.

After “FullMoon” wrapped up the main set, they didn’t stay away long, returning quickly to play two of their most epic live songs, “The Cage,” which has been out of rotation for a while, and “Don’t Say a Word”—fantastic ways to end the night! Admittedly, I’m old enough and have enough alcoholic friends that I could live without the “Vodka” outro now… they aren’t exactly young party animals themselves anymore. Somehow, promoting rampant alcoholism at the end of a gig seems a little redundant to me, but hey, whatever floats their boat.

As someone who, as mentioned, goes to a lot of concerts and has seen Sonata Arctica about sixteen times now, give or take, I find myself starting to fixate on other sides of the performance than the musicians alone. By “Dark Empath,” I was noticing that Henrik Klingenberg’s keyboard station was mostly completely hidden in shadow sometimes and I was ultimately not very impressed with the light show on the whole. While there were some nice moments and the cold light often matched the feel and artwork from the songs, there were a lot of extremely weird/bad moments with the lighting too… for example, when Tony was doing a solo intro to “Replica,” there was no light on him anywhere and, as a pretty short person, this meant that I literally couldn’t see him at all… during a solo part! That’s inexcusable. There was also essentially no front-lighting whatsoever in the first three songs, which is when the photographers are generally doing their work. How is it so impossible for lighting techs to know that that’s when photos are done… it’s been the standard for decades!?

Overall, this was a decent show for a band of this age, though it did not come close to outdoing the best show I’ve ever seen from them, which was surprisingly recently at Tuska Festival in 2022 (↓). It was weird that the drums and keyboards were so far away from each other on the stage, as it made the stage seem bigger than it needed to, and made a lot of distance between the band members… stretching the energy thin, so to speak. It seems that, overall, Henkka, Pasi, and Tommi are focused mainly on playing well, while Elias still likes to put on rocker poses for his guitar solos, and Tony is more or less serving as the act’s energy battery… and even there, it’s not like he’s behaving like an 18-year-old by any means. He’s very passionate, but tempered with maturity and dressed up with goofiness. A highlight of the show was during “The Cage” in the encore, when Tony took a guitar pick from Elias, showed it dramatically to the crowd, and then began shredding while Elias was still playing his parts—this was extremely fun and playful and genuinely made me smile and feel like they were having fun up there. While it’s disappointing that nothing from “Unia” or “The Days of Greys” was on the set this time, they did pull a couple of classic beauties out. I do think it was a missed opportunity to not focus on “Pariah’s Child” and “Reckoning Night” though, since both of those albums have anniversaries this year. Ultimately, if you enjoyed the new album though, you’ll surely have a good time on this tour!

Finnish Tour Dates

29.3.2024 Sawhouse Underground, Kuopio
30.3.2024 Kerubi, Joensuu
4.4.2024 Teatro, Turku
5.4.2024 Rytmikorjaamo, Seinäjoki

European dates to follow!

Tracklist

  1. [intro tape] One Day - Hans Zimmer

  2. First in Line

  3. Dark Empath

  4. Storm the Armada

  5. A Monster Only You Can’t See

  6. The Wolves Die Young

  7. California

  8. Among the Shooting Stars

  9. Angel Defiled

  10. Broken

  11. I Have a Right

  12. Tallulah

  13. Replica

  14. FullMoon

~encore~

  1. The Cage

  2. Don’t Say a Word

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Bear Wiseman
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