Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It used to be noted that an album must be worth at least listening to if the band had obviously spent money on the cover. The use of dramatic and in some cases exceptional pieces of art that would adorn the sleeve was a good indication that the group or artists were proud to have something memorable on the front rather than a picture of the band, something in which to capture the whole essence of what was to come. Marillion, Pink Floyd and Magnum always knew how to employ the method and now the eighth album by Sonata Artica, the wild and untamed Pariah’s Child joins that list of recordings that backs up the theory.

With a set of songs that grab the attention, the wolf has returned to lead the helpless into the comfort of the musically strong and to devour the senseless and nonsensical and in tracks such as The Wolves Die Young, the intoxicating Running Lights, the cheery smile that accompanies Half A Marathon Man and X Marks The Spot and the topical and brilliant What Did You Do In The War Dad? The wolf that Sonata Artica employs does his job supremely well.

Every metal album, if not every recording by any artist should contain an epic, a song in which the imagination feels every single note and conducts the arrangement in their head. The listener takes hold of the reigns laid down by the lyrics and runs with them. The truly epic, the musical marathon in which films are made from, the undisguised ambition in which to soar high and give the band something that will be talked of for years. In Sonata Artica’s case they don’t come much more epic, more impressive than the grandiose Larger Than Life.  Throw together Bat out of Hell or I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) by Meatloaf, Grendel by Marillion, Dreamboat Annie by Heart and even perhaps the odd dash of Phantom of the Opera if you are so inclined and what comes out is more larger than Life than perhaps almost anything you could ask for out of the shoreline of Finland.

The combination of Hamlet, Faustus and King Lear, the tragedies wrapped up in the loving embrace of the writers quill, of the dedication to the role of The Caretaker and the absurdity of existence that gives us all a part to play could perhaps not be more apt as the lyrics to Larger Than Life sweep down the ears with the same guided precision as a surgeon’s scalpel.

In an album that relies upon the complex descriptions and aural cohesion of each member of the band, Larger Than Life is one of the best songs to hit the ears so far this year.

Pariah’s Child is a great album in which to while an afternoon with, one that delves into the inventiveness of the brain fully, Power Metal at its absolute best.

Ian D. Hall