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