Their first live album Songs of Silence, recorded at their Tokyo show on September 4th, 2001, was released in November 2002. Four shows in Brazil and two more in Chile were met with wild crowds, some so loud that even the band couldn’t hear themselves onstage because the audience was louder than the instruments! The beginning of 2002 was greeted with a small South American tour. During the tour their first album Ecliptica was nominated for an Emma Award (Finnish Grammy) in the category of “Best hard rock/heavy album”. This received a lot of airplay at home and around Europe. Amid the rampant touring, they found time to release their second single from Silence called “Last Drop Falls”. After successful Japan gigs in September, they went on tour with Gamma Ray & Vanishing Point for a five week tour of 12 countries and 28 shows. The remainder of 2001 was filled with various Finnish/European shows, with their first appearance at the legendary German festival Wacken Open Air. Thanks to those high record sales, they played their first four concerts in Japan to welcoming crowds in September 2001. The album was highly successful, not only in Finland, but also in Japan, selling more than 30,000 copies within the first year.
The first single, “Wolf & Raven”, gave them their first music video, filmed in Finland. Not wasting momentum, the band quickly went back into the studio to record their second album Silence, with Tony composing all of the songs.
Singer Tony Kakko decided to concentrate more on singing live instead of doing keyboards and vocals at the same time. It led the way for the band to participate on cover albums for Metal luminaries such as the Scorpions and Helloween.
Their first album Ecliptica was released shortly after the single in Finland, and then with great success internationally. The record label recalled the single and a new version was released. Unfortunately the original pressing of the single had been accidentally slowed down – this mistake was discovered after the single had been shipped to record stores. The single contained the title track and the song ‘Mary Lou’. Sonata Arctica’s first single “UnOpened” was released in the summer of 1999. It was then that they decided to choose a more appropriate name for their music – Sonata Arctica. Ahti Kortelainen was so impressed that he sent it over to the Finnish record label Spinefarm Records, closing their first album deal in 1999. The demo codified their trademark sound of fast, melodic metal with heavy keyboards and clean high vocals. The first demo recorded by Tricky Means, FullMoon, at Tico Tico Studios in Kemi caught the eye of owner Ahti Kortelainen. In 1997 they renamed themselves Tricky Means, changing their rock ways into a more Power Metal feel and gaining influences from bands such as Stratovarius. They would release three demos under that name – Friends Till the End, Agre Pamppers and PeaceMaker. Sonata Arctica began in 1996 under the name Tricky Beans in Kemi, Finland.
0 kommentar(er)
