These comments written by Tony Kakko are from Sonata Arctica's The Collection compilation booklet.
I had really good feelings about this song when recording it. Despite its heavyness it's probably one of the most emotional songs we have. I was watching Braveheart when writing the lyrics. Sure it can be heard from it. We have played it live only a few times.
One of our first songs with double bass drums and from the first album of course. It was also on the demo which got us record deal. Ahti (Kortelainen) had lost drum tracks or at least some of them so this was recorded again as whole. We didn't exactly use click track much in the studio so perhaps for that reason or another the album version is probably 40 seconds shoter than the demo version. So it got LITTLE bit faster. We are still playing it regularly live. Good meat and potatoes song.
I have had this song in the back of my mind at least from Winterheart's Guild but I didn't get it done back then. The idea was to make The End of This Chapter themed EP or even theme LP but all the songs having made for it have been slowly ended up on other albums. It's story or more like theme will probably continue as long as Sonata Arctica is active. It was released as first single from Reckoning Night along with an EP version with few bonus songs. I think both were high on the charts. How strange.
The first single from Winterheart's Guild and quite possibly was our first number-one single. Even though it climbed there on its second week past Darude song released at the same time and stayed on top for a couple of weeks. I named it thinking people would be familiar with the name. Anything but. Nice song anyway.
Tallulah was on one of our early demos but for some reason it didn't end up on our first record. Maybe it was too naive or something. Perhaps it was a good it ended up not until on Silence as we got Mikko to play the piano parts.
This song got quite a lot of special attention when Finnish Idol contestant Agnes covered it on TV. Perhaps one of our most famous songs and among closet fans too.
Whiddily whoo. First single from Silence. "And Bodom-fans are tricked again" is the funniest thing I've heard since Silence came out. So yeah maybe this is heavier than the rest of the album. The music video made from this won best metal video awards in many places. Still has the best production of all our videos.
And my favorite, 3/4 time signature against 4/4 time signature. We sent a raw version to Japan for a listen when asked and they (Japanese record company Avalon) commented it sucks. Not using that word, but you could read it in between the lines. Then when they released exclusive EP (Orientation) Black Sheep was its first track. Kemi would be proud of that. Nice live song although I find myself suggesting we should leave it out. It bores me to death.
Broken. One of our most unbroken songs. When we went to the studio, I was completely sure this was going to be great song. Second single from Winterheart's. The single cover photograph is taken by me and it depictis lower jaw of some animal. I don't know but I reckon. It might as well be upper jaw.
I listened a lot of Royal Hunt when I made this and at least I can hear it. Very nice song and still does not feel like a chore to sing it. Maybe one of the best songs of Ecliptica.
Or is it written Full Moon? I dunno, but it doesn't matter. For a long time this was one of my favorites, but it's status has degraded through out the years. During shows it is still always and forever nice to hear people singing "run away, run away, run away" ja "Fullmoon!". This is one of the songs I imagine as I sing.
We decided to re-record to celebrate (the 10th anniversary). I would have wanted to make this even more different, but that would have been silly. Background vocals changed the most. We decided to use live arrangment such as lower the tempo a lot and all changes are justified in my opinion and make it better. And those who say the original is always the original are right. Yes it is. But this is so much better than the original!
The Cage perkele. Yeah, this has been the last song of the setlist for soooo many years and I don't see why it couldn't be in the future too. I don't complain. Nice song. It's good to have a tradition even it being the last song of the setlist. For some reason this was called DDB when rehearsing it. I have no idea where that acronym came from.
Second single cut from Silence. It was played on the radio pretty well and was on the setlist for a long time and still is sometimes. Beautiful and emotional song, tragic story about relationship, like many songs before and after it.
Oh well! Our career was almost pooh-spoiled in the beginning. Our very first single in the summer of 1999 and damn I was nervous. We went to Spinefarm during Tuska festival to celebrate the master, guys from Nightwish were there and Tuomas came to room to listen – Like I said I was nervous. Well, then it happend so that the song was released at the wrong speed. Otherwise we wouldn't have noticed but when singer sounds way lower than he is then something is wrong. A couple of hundrerd records were sold before it taken out from stores and new version was put on sale. So our first single ended up being our first collectors item. Apparently the mispressings are quite pricey on dark markets.
This was our first song ever with double bass drums. Originally this was way slower and different in other ways. One part was even removed from it and added to another song. We re-recorded the original from Successor EP for Silence album. They are both just as good as whole. The song was named after a city, where we later played this song live for the first time as Sonata Arctica.
A legendary day for us, but not just for that reason. The venue almost collapsed on us due to hailstorm and the show was almost cancelled while over 3000 angry fans waited outside in the rain. Very popular song in Japan.
Another wolf-themed song. I've been trying to make new wolf song for every album and this is from Reckoning Night. The suffering wolf sample added during mastering phase still makes me laugh. Life can't be so bleak. This song wouln't have ended up on my personal Best of Sonata compilation like many others on this album but I quess this selection is more listener friendly.
The other remake recorded exclusively for this compilation. When making new versions of these songs we didn't want to forcibly make them "better", but more akin to natural change resulted in years of playing them live. Finding the mystical "feeling" or so to speak of the original songs during re-recording is practically impossible. Even when the remakes would have been done exactly the same way people would have heard new and old as different. It's unavoidable spiritual thing. And that's okay. Maybe these remakes are not for the "pioneer" fans but as sugar-coated versions for the new fans with better sound from our humble classics.
This is arranged pretty much like current live version, except my vocal masturbation (yes, I love to sing backing vocals).
From the original version I remember when our debut album Ecliptica was being mixed we got the first of rare praises from Mikko Karmila. After Mikko had asked something from me on the phone he then said "this is suprisingly good song". It still makes me feel good and I guess this is quite good song. Yeah I like it.
Tony Kakko
February 10th 2006