I've come around on the album.
Lately I've been doing a lot of Sonata listening and reminiscing and I remembered how disappointed I was with Stones Grow Her Name, their third album I got to welcome as a fan, and one I had high hopes for. It has a lot of things going for it: it's the last Sonata album with a truly good mix and master, it's eclectic, it's exploring a genre that is absolutely in their repertoire and DNA, it has some great songs, but at the same time, it is doing the absolute opposite from playing to their strengths, and it has at least four songs that I listen to and think "wow, this is the worst song on the album. no, THIS is the worst song on the album. no, this is one of their worst songs of all time! and this one is barely a Sonata song at all!"
And now, looking back, I feel like it's not a big deal at all. Like, a blip on the radar. They put out music regularly and always think of tours that are fun to follow. That one time they got to explore something and try something new and I got an album I liked better in two years. So now I can appreciate the whole SGHN cycle for what it is.
Looking at Talviyo interviews, I can pinpoint the exact decisions that lead to things that I don't like about this album, starting with the weird idea that they should make a "live sound" album. I don't understand why, most bands they like and those they have modeled their career after have also been complimented for sounding great live but never got the idea that this means they should make a live sounding album. But fair enough. Apparently this has been a thing for them since Pariah's Child, so I guess that's at least part of the reason why we hated Pasi's mixes, since that's what they've been trying to get him to do. I guess they've been reading too many 70's bands biographies and got some weird ideas
The weird tempos, strangely enough, can be chalked up to Pasi and Tommy recording the drum and bass parts together and having fun with it - just because the beat sounds good to them while they're playing it together (because they do have great chemistry), doesn't mean that it's the right tempo for
that particular song. And finally, it's the first album where Tony had all of the songs ready before they entered the studio, which is fine, but some of his late additions to every album have been my favorite songs, so it's weird to have an album with those moments missing.
They talk a lot about how they kinda went half way between not having an outside producer at all to having their front-of-house sound guy producing them on this album, and Tony admits he'd like to have someone filling the classic producer role to come in before the mixing stage and give advice on which songs should be slower or faster or which things should be added or subtracted. But they also say they're not ready to take that step since album creation is a very intimate thing for them and they are just not comfortable bringing in someone they don't know extremely well into that process. Maybe they could benefit from someone coming in and shaking them up like Peter Tägtgren did to Amorphis on their Circle album. But I think they'd be best served by just working the way they used to before Pariah's Child, with all of them doing exactly what's in the job description, rehearsing, recording each other and themselves, carefully selecting songs, and then sending them off to get a proper Sonata Arctica sound, the one we know and love from several albums before.