Sonata Arctica Post Rehearsal Diary

As previously reported, SONATA ARCTICA are currently rehearsing in preparation for their next studio album. Keyboardist Henkka Klingenberg has an ongoing rehearsal diary up and running at the band's official website. Following are his entries from Week Two:

Monday 9/25:
"Woke up at six and caught the train at seven. I dropped by the Tico-Tico Studios to chat with Ahti for a while about the recording schedule etc. Tommy came by as well and we then went for lunch and picked up some groceries before heading out to the woods. The flu has now moved on to Make and Tony and Jani is still down, so today it was just me and Tommy banging away. However we checked out some new stuff and worked on the arrangemets a bit, nothing too much though. Tommy left and I went back to my cabin to rest for a while. Later on I fooled around for a couple of hours writing charts etc. So as usual nothing too crazy or weird happened. I've been thinking of how to describe the new material we're working on but it's a bit difficult so I guess you'll just have to wait and hear for yourself when the time comes. Maybe Tony will drop a line or two at some point about the music, who knows ?"

god natt,
~H

Tuesday 9/26:
"Starting out at 10:00 as planned, Tony and Jani also joined the ranks so except for Make the whole band was present. It was particulary nice to hear the songs with guitar for a change. The time went by pretty fast and around 17:00 we were done for the day. We still have about 18 days left of the rehearsal camp so it definately looks that we'll be ready in time for the studio. As there's not much going on here today anymore I'll guess it's time to watch some Columbo and wait for the sauna to heat up. Make should be back tomorrow and perhaps we can come up with some misbehavioural activities to tell about and make these ramblings more exciting, however the described days pretty much reflect the reality of pre-production work and besides the music, it can be pretty dull sometimes.

Haha, what a fuckin' sentence, well I guess you can figure it out ok ?

It's time to relax."

...bastudags,
~H

Wedneday 9/27:
"Let it be stated for the record that I hate getting up before noon. Punkki and Make came by yesterday evening and after the sauna we watched some footage from the SA open air. It actually looked pretty ok. Well, back to the present: everyone is more or less well, at least well enough to rehearse. There's still a lot of material to go through but today was kind of a drag. We didn't get too much done during our daily 6 hour routine. The focus was a bit off, at least for yours truly. Make is coming by again later and we'll tap into some new songs for tomorrow. Time to eat and maybe sleep a bit before that. Yeah, I'm a lazy bastard sometimes. Maybe I should start sleeping during the nights. Actually I got a pretty decent rip-off idea for a horror flick that I could shoot out here, I just need a camera and a couple of extras."

hoppade, skuttade, jagade sov,
~H

Thursday 9/28:
"Yep. Yep. Hephep. We got a lot done today, which was a nice change from yesterday. Otherwise the day went by pretty typically drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. The autumn-weather is really starting to kick in and it's been raining the whole day. I like rain though the temperature is getting a little bit on the 'too cold' side. In other news, I just finished the second season of Columbo so now I have to find something else to watch during the evenings. There's not too much happening here anymore today, maybe some sauna and a little bit of private practising. Make's gonna drop some poker videos off later :) ....and tomorrow is naturally the last day of rehearsals before the weekend. There's probably a ton of e-mail etc to deal with so it'll fly by pretty fast. (I don't have online access out here)."

frysande vargar i sn?n,
~H

Friday 9/29:
"I'm now on the train, on my way home. We played through a couple of new songs today and that makes it a total of 8 songs that we've more or less made ourselves familiar with. So far everything looks good. The new stuff is definitely the next step on the path of SA = this will not be Reckoning Night Part 2 . But don't you people worry, we know what we're doing. Oh, btw Tony and Jani have been taking pictures from the sessions and we'll post something here soon (probably).

For the impatient ones: nobody has gotten really huge or withered away so we pretty much look like before.....that's about all I have to say right now, I better get back to reading Brunson's Super System."

den långa vaegen hem,
~H