History Music / SonataArctica

* BilingualBonus: In "Zeroes", there's the line "because it's not my ass, per se, on the line". "Perse" is Finnish for ass. Also an IncrediblyLamePun.

[[caption-width-right:350:"We're not Iron Maiden,\\
and we're not from England\\
We are Sonata and we hail from Finland!"[[note]]Left to right: Henrik Klingenberg, Elias Viljanen, Tony Kakko, Tommy Portimo and Pasi Kauppinen[[/note]]]]

** The Caleb Saga, a series of songs about a man and a woman who fall apart ("The End of This Chapter"), leading to a violent rampage from the man ("Don't Say a Word") and the man's suicide ("Juliet"). Also there's a prequal to it, called "Caleb".

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: The Boy Who Wanted To Be A Real Puppet. [[spoiler:He tries to steal the puppet he wants so much, and is turned into one himself. [[AndIMustScream And He Must Scream]].]]

** One of their [=EPs=] is called ''Takatalvi''. "Takatalvi" is a Finnish word literally meaning "backwinter", i.e. a cold spell in the spring. This is a short period of time when it suddenly gets colder and often snow will cover the landscape for a couple of days or even for only a few hours.
** "Revontulet" (a song on the Silence album) is Finnish for "aurora".

* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: A song for every album. "Full Moon" on Ecliptica, "Wolf and Raven" on Silence, "The Cage" on Winterheart's Guild, "Ain't Your Fairytale" on Reckoning Night, both "The Vice" and "It Won't Fade" on Unia, and "The Last Amazing Grays" on The Days of Grays. "Full Moon" is about a werewolf, "Wolf and Raven" is a new werewolf angsting about his condition, "The Cage" is a wolf captured by humans, "Ain't Your Fairytale" is wolves vs. humans, "It Won't Fade" was confirmed by Tony Kakko to be the album's 'wolf song' and "The Vice" is about feuding littermates, and "The Last Amazing Grays" is a dying wolf looking fondly on the next generation. The Bonus track "In My Eyes You're a Giant" is also a Wolf Song, about a young wolf and his relationship with a human.
** Interestingly, there doesn't seem to be one on ''Stones Grow Her Name.''
** ''Pariah's Child'' features a return to the concept with "The Wolves Die Young".

* PrecisionFStrike: From "Dream Thieves:"

* PyrrhicVictory: Mentioned in "Destruction Preventer:"
--> Now tell me, who won here tonight? / The price of winning worthless fights

* TakeThat: "It Won't Fade" is a long, semi-veiled Take That to former guitarist Jani Limatainen's irresponsible behavior just before his departure.

* XtremeKoolLetterz: ''Cinderblox''.

* BookEnds: ''The Days of Grays'' begins with a truncated instrumental of "Everything Fades to Gray" and finishes proper with its full vocal versio, not counting bonus tracks.

** ''Reckoning Night'' has a hidden track after "Shamandalie" where the band jams on a silly flamenco tune.
** In the Japanese version of ''Unia'', a while after the final track, the ending to "Good Enough is Good Enough" plays again, accompanied by some sheep noises and a laugh.

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Caleb may or may not be supernatural, (The song "Juliet" implies this) but Juliet is just a normal woman- [[spoiler: and she KILLS him.]]

* {{It Is Pronounced Tro-PAY}}: It's pronounced "Oo-nee-ah", not "You-nee-ah", since it's Finnish.

* Keyboard: Mikko Harkin (2000-2002)

[[quoteright:303:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sonataarctica.jpg]]

Eventually, Mikko Harkin joined as the keyboardist, bassist Janne Kivilahti left, and ex-guitarist Marko Paasikoski came back to play bass. ''Silence'' was released. In 2002, Mikko left, and ''Winterheart's Guild'' was recorded with the help of Jens Johansson from Stratovarius. The band narrowed their search for a new keyboardist down to two potential members, and spent some time getting both of them drunk to see how they would get along with the band. Henrik Klingenberg passed the test. In 2004, ''Reckoning Night'' was released; it had some progressive influences, and if this was a novel, I'd call that foreshadowing. But, to get on with the story, a live DVD, ''For the Sake of Revenge'', was recorded in Japan in 2005.

In 2006, the band found they had a problem: Jani still hadn't finished his civil service, which is mandatory in Finland, and couldn't leave the country, so Elias Viljanen replaced him for the tour. As if this didn't annoy the fans enough, Sonata Arctica decided they were completely and utterly bored of power metal. ''Unia'' came out in 2007, and was a rather sudden switch to progressive metal. Some fans loved it, some hated it. Elias permanently replaced Jani as the guitarist shortly after. In 2009, ''The Days of Grays'' came out, and got reactions as mixed as ''Unia'' did. Another live DVD was recorded in April of 2011 in Oulu, Finland, and released later that year. In May 2012, the band released ''Stones Grow Her Name,'' and has once again drawn sharply polarized reactions from fans and critics. Their eighth album, ''Pariah's Child,'' was released in March 2014, and is a little closer to the traditional power metal, although not without the band's now trademark idiosyncrasies and experimentation.

* ProtestSong: Fairytale, off of The Ninth Hour seems to be this, with several TakeThats to Donald Trump.

* Ecliptica (1999)
* Silence (2001)
* Winterheart's Guild (2003)
* Reckoning Night (2004)
* Unia (2007)
* The Days of Grays (2009)
* Stones Grow Her Name (2012)
* Pariah's Child (2014)
* The Ninth Hour (2016)

* CoverVersion: They've done a few, mostly as B-sides later collected in EPs.

* DeathBySex: In "White Pearl, Black Oceans..."

** "Wildfire: Part III," a tale of greedy industrialists destroying a pristine land, complete with a quote from David Attenborough at the end.

* Giutar: Jani Liimatainen (1996-2007)

* AntiLoveSong: The Caleb story is a series of these.

** In the Japanese version of ''Unia'', a while after the final track, the ending to "Good Enough is Good Enough" plays again, with Tony making some strange noises then laughing.

** ''Pariah's Child'' has some ominous chimes briefly play after the ending of "On the Faultline (Closure to an Animal)".

-->Don't worry, I've done this before./It'll hurt like hell, and leave you sore.