Sonata Arctica have chosen today to reveal all about their new album. We already knew that they were working on it and The Ninth Hour, as the album will be titled, is dropping later this year. Only two years after the release of Pariah's Child, the Finnish melodic metal quintet will release The Ninth Hour on October 7th via Nuclear Blast Records. Check out the intriguing cover artwork here as an introduction to the album.




Once again, the album was produced by Sonata Arctica themselves and mixed by Pasi Kauppinen.

"The studio work for the new record started seriously in mid-April 2016 in several home studios around Finland," singer Tony Kakko explains. "But the main recording and mixing took place at the Studio57 in Alaveteli, Finland. It functions as a kind of centre point and all work finally ends up there. We aimed to create another melodic, beautiful, surprising Sonata Arctica album... Did it turn out that way? I surely think so. But maybe I should leave that for you to decide!"

About the cover: "The artwork of our ninth studio album The Ninth Hour depicts a future utopian landscape on the background. Nature and human technologies are in balance. In the middle we have an hour glass contraption with a knob for us to meddle with. The right-hand side cup represents the nature side with no humans left, on the left we have the human dystopia after we have destroyed Nature. The idea I had was, that turning the knob will tilt the hour glass in one direction or another, and the other cup will slowly empty and that future will be erased. Biblically we are expected to repent and sacrifice on The Ninth Hour... to dive right back to a more mundane reality, it's a fact that we are currently living in critical, historical times. Our decisions will define the future. Not only ours as a race, but the future of this entire planet. We need to make sacrifices and in many cases we will repent our already made choices."

After the summer festival season and the release of their anticipated record, the band will embark on a European tour together with their label mates Twilight Force followed by a North American tour to present the new songs to their fans.

Source:	nuclearblast.de
Band profile:	Sonata Arctica