SONATA ARCTICA vocalist Tony Kakko and keyboardist Henkka Klingenberg recently travelled to New York City to promote the band's new album, Unia. The following is Klingenberg's diary from the trip:

"Hello again people !

Tony and I just came back from the promo trip in New York and there's of course a small bunch of events to bring to light. We had a total blast even if there were some things trying to kick us down (mainly a lost wallet). Ok, so here's the day by day account."

Saturday, March 31st:

"Naturally I will start off with whining about the early wake up (0500) and the fucking flights and layovers = 23 hours total travel time from Kokkola to NYC. So, you can imagine in what shape we arrive at the customs in New York. As we're waiting for our bags, a customs-dude in uniform comes up and starts chatting and asking questions. No problem there but when we have our bags and he puts a hand on each of ours shoulders stating: 'Let's go boys.' Both me and Tony can't think of anything else than the upcoming rubber glove party. Fortunately that's not the case, instead he rushes us past the line and we get out faster than usually. Our record company rep. Loana is about to have a heart attack when she sees us coming out with an escort, but she recovers fast enough not to pass out. At this point we've been up for around 26 hours with just occasional dozing off on the airplane, so we're ready to hit the hotel and pass out. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I still had to go to the bar next door for a couple of cold ones but basically this was the end of the night...)."

Sunday, April Fool's Day:

"After a breakfast in the nearby cafe, and checking out NIGHTWISH's funny April Fool's joke, it's time to start the day. As I look on my schedule there's interviews from 11:00am to 5:30pm with a lunch break in between, so it's really not that bad. Of course, I manage to screw up the beginning by destroying my phone card (by accident I may add) but after I get it running it's no problem anymore and the day just passes by pretty quickly. We were trying to get to go to the Rangers game in the evening but that backfired so it's basically just dinner and some beer. We walk around a little and then enjoy the beauty that is American television before hitting the sack. I wonder if we can get Comedy Central here in Europe?"

Monday, April 2nd:

"Another early morning, actually not that early (0800), but fucked up by the time difference I wake up around 0530. Alrighty then, we quickly move over to the NBC studios to get stand-by tickets for the Conan O'Brien show (another thing that will backfire later on) and on the way we catch a performance of Beyoncé or however you spell it....anyways, the hot chick from All Saints. At the same time we spot Kevin Spacey from a distance but don't manage to shout 'Kayser Soze'. Maybe better that way. Next up is an interview for Metal Maniacs which is accompanied by a couple of pre-dinner beers. At 12:30 we head out to a Vietnamese restaurant to have a dinner with a bunch of journalists, distribution people etc. Naturally there's a lot of joking going on and a pile of beers for at least some of us. Then to the Caroline distribution offices to meet with staff and VIP's. This of course is very enlightening, but unfortunately they have no beer, a mistake that is promised to be taken care of by the next time we'll drop by. A quick swing by NBC studios shows that we won't make it to the Conan taping (they were letting the 50 first people in and we had the numbers 54-56) whatever....back to the hotel and an hour of rest before the listening party at Lit Lounge. This was basically us playing the new album, hanging out with fans and DJ-ing some. It was fuckin' awesome to meet sooo many cool people and have a good time (I think some magazine covered it with pictures etc. so I won't go into detail that much). Jens dropped by and later on we went to a bar called Cutting Room and got totally wasted."

Tuesday, April 3rd:

"Hangover, for the first time on this trip...nice :) Lucky as I am, there's just a couple of radio interviews set up for the afternoon and those go by quite easily and at around 5:00 pm it's time for another VIP dinner with all kinds of new people. This time it's at a Thai place and the food rules! As well as the beer! On the dinner we get a recommendation to watch a play called Avenue Q , but as usual it's sold out. Maybe we oughta learn a lesson from this, if you want to go to an event of any kind get your tickets in advance and not on the same day....it won't fucking work. Amen. As we have no plans for the evening we meet up with Munsey our radio promo guy and a couple of his friends Bobby & Bobby Jr as well as Jens. We have a MODERATE amount of whisky and beer and hang out, chatting about a whole bunch of stuff which basically is of no concern to anybody else. Nevertheless, a nice laid-back evening."

Wednesday, April 4th:

"The only thing scheduled for this day is a feature for the Revolver magazine around noon. The basic idea is that we get some equipment and have 2 hours time to compose and record a song. You can read more about what happened in the upcoming Revolver magazine and the song can be downloaded on the web. In short it was a lot of fun dickin' around and we ended up recording a funny short song. I'm not sure I'm allowed to release the title yet, so I just keep my mouth shut. Be that as it may, I think most of you will find it as amusing as we did. Ok, enough said, the rest of the day was shopping, eating, catching the limo ride back to the airport and sitting in three different airplanes before finally hitting the home couch.

Cheers & thanks NYC !

Shit, a couple of more things that I forgot to mention. As me and Tony already said to the people at the listening party, Jani won't be able to make it to the US/Can-tour this year. This is due to his serving the country-mess which is still in progress and as we need to start applying working permits shortly he won't be able to make it. This sucks ass of course but there's really nothing we can do about it. Other than that, things seem to be running well and we actually have seen the preview of the video which looks fuckin' great! Can't wait for everybody else to see it....this is way better than any previous videos in my opinion. We have a couple of promo trips still to make, namely Europe and Japan, and I'll probably check in after them as well, and of course as the tour starts there will be more insane tales from the road."

Until then I remain thirsty,

Henkka

Check out BW&BK;'s review of Unia here. Go to this location to check out the band's complete 2007 tour schedule.