Reckoning Night cover

Reckoning Night

Released

God bless the Finns and their mastery of melancholic melody (a holdover from their folk music tradition). Sonata Arctica could have been yet another post-Helloween/Yngwie neoclassical bore, more interested in rapid firing notes than in the emotional content of the songs – and there’s certainly no shortage of guitar pyrotechnics on Reckoning Night. By grounding their downer fairytales in concrete character viewpoints, though, they make fantastical stories like “Don’t Say a Word” and “The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Real Puppet” hit the listener right where it hurts: their hearts.

Jeff Treppel

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