The Days of Grays is the sixth full-length studio album by Finnish power metal band Sonata Arctica. The album was released in South America on 8 September 2009, on 16 September in Finland, 18 September in Europe and 22 September in North America through Nuclear Blast. The special edition of the album includes the album along with an orchestral CD as a digipak.
It is the first album with guitarist Elias Viljanen and also the first since 1999's Ecliptica in which vocalist Tony Kakko also plays the keyboards.
Sonata Arctica keyboardist Henrik Klingenberg described the album as:
a bit darker and maybe not so complex as [2007's] "Unia". Nevertheless, it's definitely not a back-to-the-roots album with fast power metal. All the trademark SONATA stuff is on there, solos, lots of singing [and] some slower songs.
The first single from the album is "The Last Amazing Grays". It was released by Nuclear Blast Records only in Finland on 26 August. The band ran a fan art contest to choose the artwork for their second announced single, "Flag in the Ground" which the press release calls "an uplifting story about a young couple fighting their way to freedom and their own land in North America back in early 1800s." The winner of the contest was Simo Heikkinen from Finland. The name for The Days of Grays apparently took a very long time to come to as the band had a name for the record that was deemed more appropriate "for a death metal band or something" according to Henrik Klingenberg. In a French interview, Tony Kakko stated that the original name was Deathaura, the name of a song on the album.
The track "Juliet" continues the so called Caleb saga, a series of songs that started on Silence's "The End of This Chapter", was continued on Reckoning Night's "Don't Say a Word", Unia's "Caleb" and would be later continued on The Ninth Hour's "Till Death's Done Us Apart" and Talviyö's "The Last of the Lambs".
"Everything Fades to Gray" features the lyrics "It's not fair, it's not fair, there was a time now" relating to the Twilight Zone episode Time Enough at Last and "The Truth Is Out There" is about the popular TV series The X-Files.
Tracklist:
Disc 1
- Everything Fades to Gray 03:07
- Deathaura 07:59
- The Last Amazing Grays 05:40
- Flag in the Ground 04:09
- Breathing 03:55
- Zeroes 04:24
- The Dead Skin 06:15
- Juliet 05:59
- No Dream Can Heal a Broken Heart 04:33
- As If the World Wasn't Ending 03:49
- The Truth Is Out There 05:04
- Everything Fades to Gray (full version) 04:30
- Nothing More 03:58
- In My Eyes You're a Giant 04:42
Time: 01:08:04
Disc 2 - Live Around Europe 2008
- Paid in Full (live in France) 04:27
- Black Sheep / Elias Viljanen guitar solo (live in Italy) 05:56
- Draw Me (live in Switzerland) 04:06
- It Won't Fade (live in France) 06:23
- Replica (live in Switzerland) 04:38
- Don't Say a Word (live in Switzerland) 06:09
Time: 31:39
All songs written by Tony Kakko.
"Flag in the Ground" is a re-working of an old pre-Sonata Arctica song called "BlackOut" from the band's "Friends Till the End" demo they recorded under the name Tricky Beans.
Videoclips made for:
-"Flag in the Ground"
Recording information:
Drums and bass recorded at Tico Tico Studio, Kemi, Finland.
Guitars recorded at Fantom Studios, Ylöjärvi, Finland and at Magic 7 Studio
Keyboards recorded at Lanceland 2 and at Kakkos-studio
Hammond organ recorded at Studio 57
Vocals recorded at Kakkos-studio
Cellos recorded at RockValley-studios, Finland
Female vocals recorded at Great Sounds Studio
Mixed at Finnvox Studios, Helsinki, Finland in June 2009.
All songs written by Tony Kakko.
All songs arranged by Tony Kakko & Sonata Arctica.
Produced by Tony Kakko & Sonata Arctica 2009.
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