Category Archives: Music I Love

Once-monthly shares of music that changed my life.

Music I Love: “The Days of Grays”, Sonata Arctica (2009)

Don’t forget, you can be reading your copy of The Redemption of Erâth: Consolation in just a few minutes for only $3.99! Click here to buy.

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Track Listing:

  1. Everything Fades to Gray (Instrumental)
  2. Deathaura
  3. The Last Amazing Grays
  4. Flag in the Ground
  5. Breathing
  6. Zeroes
  7. The Dead Skin
  8. Juliet
  9. No Dream Can Heal a Broken Heart
  10. As If the World Wasn’t Ending
  11. The Truth Is Out There
  12. Everything Fades to Gray (Full Version)

 

Sonata Arctica are one of Finland’s finest metal exports, having released increasingly complex and progressive albums since their 1999 debut, Ecliptica. Although their origins are firmly rooted in Scandinavian power metal (their first few albums are strongly reminiscent of fellow Finns Stratovarius), their music has become much more refined over the years, with last year’s release Pariah’s Child having only a few tracks that could truly be called ‘power metal’.

Sonata Arctica’s breakthrough album was their sophomore effort, Silence (2001), a sprawling 15-track epic that at times harkens to their influences in 70s and 80s power rock such as Scorpions. They followed this with Winterheart’s Guild (2003) and Reckoning Night (2004), but it was with their fifth album, Unia (2007), that their style truly matured into something unique and different from the many other power metal bands around them. Losing the blastbeats and double kick drums, Unia saw more sophisticated songwriting and album planning (the songs flow beautifully one into another), and although they reintroduced some of the power metal influences with The Days of Grays in 2009, this more progressive style has remained with them ever since.

The Days of Grays is one of their most important albums for me, because it was largely the soundtrack to The Redemption of Erâth: Consolation when I was first writing it. I immediately fell in love with the haunting and sad introduction Everything Fades to Gray, and the forbidden love story of Deathaura echoes the unspoken love between Brandyé and Sonora (in my mind, anyway). However, it’s the third track, The Last Amazing Grays, that truly stands out for me as a song that speaks for everything in Consolation, with its reminders that everything is doomed to fade and die eventually:

“I feel the time is catching up with us

How many days until its hunger is satisfied

Living the final golden days, we are the last Amazing Grays

Hoping the young will lead the pack now”

Sonata Arctica, The Last Amazing Grays (2009)

I played this song endlessly on repeat whilst writing the death scenes in The Redemption of Erâth: Consolation, and it probably explains the tears when they died (don’t want to spoil too much if you haven’t read it yet!).

Other standout tracks include Flag in the Ground, an epic tale of adventure and freedom (the most ‘power metal’ song of the album, and the most upbeat, too), and Juliet, the third part of a series of songs started with The End of this Chapter on their second album, Silence. As If the World Wasn’t Ending and The Truth Is Out There lead into the dismal finale, a reprise of the opening track, but this time with vocals and a majestic, hope-dashing conclusion.

Sonata Arctica followed this album with 2012’s Stones Grow Her Name and last year’s Pariah’s Child, which though both excellent albums, don’t quite match the grandeur and sadness of The Days of Grays. If anything their style has become slightly poppier and a little more upbeat, which isn’t always to my miserable taste. If you were looking to get into Sonata Arctica for the first time, you could do worse than to listen to this album.

 

Thought of the Week: Making Music

Apologies for the delay in this week’s post—and even more apologies, because I have an admission to make: I haven’t done any (any) writing in the past two weeks.

Argh!

I have, however, what I hope is a reasonable excuse. Instead of devoting my time to words on paper (or computer screen), I have instead been trying my hand for the first time in many years at writing music:

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Did you know that I wrote music, once upon a time? Ahem … of course you knew—you’ve checked out all of my website, haven’t you? I have a degree in music composition from the University of Sheffield, and for quite some time in my youth thought I might be a professional composer.

Well … life got in the way, of course, and that particular dream never happened. Then, a few years ago the creative juices started flowing again, but what came out were not notes, but words. So The Redemption of Erâth was born.

But deep in the back of my mind, I’ve always wanted to return to writing music, and with the advent of advanced notation and recording software, I decided to revisit one of my earlier works: a symphony for full orchestra, first written when I was about fifteen.

Inspired by the likes of Beethoven and Dvořák, I had come up with a couple of melodic ideas that seemed to fit better in an orchestral environment rather than solo piano (which was my medium of choice up to that point), and so with all the enthusiasm of gusto of youth I set about writing a symphony. Full, four-movement piece, which would have totaled nearly an hour in length—had I ever finished it. I ended up with first, third and fourth movements, but never got around to writing the second (slow movement). What I accomplished was, for my age and relative inexperience, phenomenal; however, it was most certainly not publishable, never mind performable. I didn’t have the understanding of the immense variety of instruments in a full orchestra at the time.

But that’s what I went to university for. And now, with a solid background in composition and a shorter orchestral piece (that I’m actually quite proud of) under my belt from my final dissertation, I’ve decided, while the mood strikes me, to open up Logic Pro X and Finale 2014 and start making some music! It’s tedious, long-winded and thankless work—in two weeks I’ve managed to write approximately seven minutes’ worth of music. In the first movement alone, I have another fifteen to go.

But the joy of creating is the same as it always has been, and fret not—though Brandyé and Elven have taken a (very temporary) back seat, I will return to them and their adventures in Erâth.

For now, here is Symphony in F minor—so far!

Featured image from http://wallpaperswide.com/old_music_score-wallpapers.html.

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Music I Love: “The Pale Haunt Departure”, Novembers Doom (2005)

The pale haunt departure

Novembers Doom hail from Chicago, making them one of the few fine doom metal bands not from Sweden. Their style is both crushingly heavy and hauntingly beautiful, and The Pale Haunt Departure is for me one of their finest releases.

The band was birthed to a whirlwind of lineup changes and EPs in the early 1990s, moving swiftly from a thrash/death metal band to a much eerier and doom-laden sound. In 1995 their first full-length album Amid Its Hallowed Mirth, paying homage to the sound of early releases by bands such as My Dying Bride and Anathema. This was followed by Of Sculptured Ivy and Stone, furthering the classic doom metal sound that they had set out with. In 2000 this was followed with The Knowing, but it was 2002’s To Welcome the Fade that introduced a more polished, faster and melodic sound, similar to contemporaries My Dying Bride, with whom they toured around the same time.

And then came The Pale Haunt Departure, bringing a much-needed maturity to their music, both compositionally and in production. Simultaneously shimmering and heavy, it balances fast-paced death metal with hauntingly beautiful acoustic moments deftly in a manner that reflects the progressive style of bands such as Opeth as much as it does traditional doom metal. In particular is the penultimate track Through a Child’s Eyes, a dismal ballad that brings shivers to my spine.

The album opens with title track The Pale Haunt Departure, eerie and dissonant choirs giving way to thundering drums and crushing guitars, blasting out of the gate at breakneck pace. This is followed by the epic Swallowed by the Moon, breaking in with a jarring counterpoint of acoustic strumming and deafening distortion before vocalist Paul Kehr’s refined death growls soar over the music. It is on this track that we also are introduced to his clean singing and unearthly, deep moaning. Autumn Reflection brings a change of pace, opening with delicate acoustic guitar work. When the heaviness sets in again it is at a much slower pace, trudging miserably on. Dark World Burden speeds us up again, before leading into the absolutely marvelous back half of the album. In the Absence of Grace, The Dead Leaf Echo, Through a Child’s Eyes and Collapse of the Fallen Throe merge seamlessly one into another, traveling through a world of utter darkness and misery.

One of the things that makes this album meaningful for me is the theme that threads throughout the songs: a father and husband, torn apart with guilt and misery as the darkness of his soul rips him away from all that he loves. There are moments that bring genuine tears to my eyes, where the words could have come from my own thoughts:

“Will you remember when I held you tight?

Will you remember the sound of my voice?

Once again the daylight fades, and I’m swallowed by the moon

Will this experience scar your fragile mind?

Will you remember when we would both laugh?”

Swallowed by the moon – Novembers Doom, 2005

A plaintive song to his child, begging forgiveness for the misery that he has brought, it haunts me every time I hear it. Equally powerful are the words of The Dead Leaf Echo, an acknowledgement of the utter failure as a husband:

“Since the day I let you believe, that a grand life I would provide

I am haunted by the failure you see before you, consuming the echo

To travel the road of our dreams, with my back against the wall

All I can do, is look the other way, and pretend that your face held a smile.”

The Dead Leaf Echo – Novembers Doom, 2005

So many times have these same thoughts crossed my mind that I cannot help but be drawn into this album, traveling its road of misery unto the very end. It’s something that will probably not be to everybody’s taste, but for me is the perfect draught of agony and misery.

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