Jun 15 2026, 9.34am / Features
Dear Joey and Brooke, What a wild ride! I just wanted to write to express …
Sonata Arctica have somewhat of a reputation for their diversity of music. Across their eight albums they have covered everything from rock to hard rock to heavy metal to harmonic metal; with original member and vocalist Tony Kakko admitting that even the band are sometimes at a loss to explain their eclectic nature.
“After Reckoning Night we started this weird, whirling thing going from one direction to another,” explained vocalist and keyboard player Kakko, “first with Unia then The Days of Grays which was totally different from Unia in my opinion. Then we went to another extreme on Stones Grow Her Name which was more like a rock or a hard rock album and then coming up with Pariah’s Child which was a more back in the middle of the road kind of album for us. It could have been the album that followed Reckoning Night. It’s more in line with that album except there’s ten years between them. Now The Ninth Hour is yet again really in line so this time we’ve managed to avoid hitting something on the road and veer from one side to the other for a change and we’re going straight forward again (laughs).”
As well as being Sonata Arctica’s ninth album, The Ninth Hour is also a deeply personal album which has a lot to say about the current plight of this planet. Although there are religious connotations, Kakko says this was more of an afterthought with the title rather than the rantings of a religious zealot.
Humans, our technology and nature, everything is in harmony but then you have this hourglass contraption there—two alternatives for this utopia—and by meddling with this kind of wheel that you have under the hourglass it is representing everything that we are doing wrong at the moment like polluting and destroying this planet.
[ Tony Kakko ]
“It has very little to do with religion per se,” he said. “Of course, it’s from the bible but I’m not really a religious person. It’s important to relate the albums content to the cover artwork. I first came up with the concept for the cover with a utopian landscape and everything is beautiful. Humans, our technology and nature, everything is in harmony but then you have this hourglass contraption there—two alternatives for this utopia—and by meddling with this kind of wheel that you have under the hourglass it is representing everything that we are doing wrong at the moment like polluting and destroying this planet. Eventually all of this polluting and meddling with that wheel is going to tilt the hourglass in one direction, thus choosing and destroying the other option. The other options are dystopia where a nation is basically gone or human beings we are gone and nature has had a chance of healing itself so that’s what we have on the cover. I first came up with that and then the baby needed a name and I started approaching it by thinking this is our ninth album and literally the first idea that popped into my mind was The Ninth Hour. I’m not religious but I knew it was biblical so I started reading about it and what it really means. It potentially could be a really bad thing to have as an album title (laughs). The reason I chose that was this one line that was mentioned that ‘God only wants us to sacrifice and repent on the ninth hour’ and this is exactly what we are facing right now. We need to make sacrifices to allow this planet to survive and it might be things like recycling more efficiently or larger things—and it’s gonna hurt—but in many cases we will repent and be sorry for the choices of a previous generation. We have destroyed so many places and there are a lot of things under threat right now.”
While pointing out mans mistakes through music, Kakko is quick to stress that while presenting the problems he is not providing a quick fix nor preaching through his lyrics.
“We are here to more or less talk about these problems,” he informed. “I’m not the preaching kind at all (laughs). I just make observations. Generally speaking we could do this and we could do that but we’re probably not going to because ‘We Are What We Are’, according to one of the songs on the album. We need to change our ways. Fundamentally, I consider myself to be more a part of the problem rather than the solution. I try to do things better constantly and I’m teaching my kids to do things better as a default than I ever have before. It’s tiny steps but I HAVE to drive a car and I HAVE to fly to places where I could take a sailboat because it would take too much time. Fundamentally I am part of the problem still but I’m getting there. I’m not here to preach.”
While acknowledging the eclectic style of Sonata Arctica’s music has been a feature of the bands development over the years, Kakko alludes to the fact that maybe they have found their definitive sound over their last two albums. While admitting musical growth is an important part of a bands psyche, he also says that currently the band is in a better musical headspace than it has been for some time.
“When we were touring before Pariah’s Child we had one of the most enlightening moments that we have had on tour when we realized we needed to go back to metal,” Kakko enthused. “The rock thing it just didn’t work. We realized it was making the shows boring. We were bored on stage and as much as we love the new kind of democratic audience coming to our shows there were a lot of people there who didn’t necessarily belong at a metal concert turning up and we didn’t see too many of the head banging people we were accustomed to seeing and we started missing all of that. Pariah’s Child was the medicine for that and I think we’re gonna stay there because the metal audience is the best. If I come up with anything in the future that is not like Sonata Arctica then I’m just gonna do a solo album or something (laughs).”
