SONATA ARCTICA have started recording their next studio album. Keyboardist Henkka Klingenberg will be keeping a studio diary; his first entry is below:

December 5th, 2006:

"Hello people !

I'll tell you a little bit about where we're at with the album for those of you who're curious. I went to Kemi last week (29.11.) to check out what was happening and to pick up the basic tracks for my overdubs. At that point Tommy had played all the drums, Jani had laid down demo guitars and some of the bass-tracks were also ready. In addition to this there was a whole bunch of singing and keys on there by Tony, so I got a pretty good idea about how things seem to shape up. I hung around the Tico-tico studio for a couple of days, listening to the songs and Marko playing bass.

Anyways, yesterday Tony came down to Kokkola and we headed out to my friend's studio (Studio 57, which is basically in the woods) with a wild bunch of string players. At the end of the day we had two tracks ready, we'll see if they make it to the album. It was however very nice to listen to professionals playing some of our songs, adding their own flavour to the mix. As I write this, Jani is in Helsinki at Sonic Pump studios, tracking all the rhythm guitars (he'll be done by the end of the week), on Thursday (7.12.) I'll go back to Studio 57 to play some hammond parts and next week I'm supposed to play the Grand Piano for a couple of songs. It's a bit interesting with the hammond and piano since we tune down a half-step and you can't tune those instruments, so it might be a little bit tricky. Those of you who don't know what I'm talking about...never mind...and all you crazy keyboard players out there, you'll know what I mean :) = boring technical details.

So, the album is well on its way....and all the recording should be done by the end of the month. This time around we have about 20 songs, we'll see how many will actually end up on the album. Musically this album will be a lot more progressive than the last one and I think it will end up heavier as well."

That's all for now,

Henkka

The studio diary can be found here.