One of the mostly anticipated tours of the year is about to start: The Nordic Power Metal Titans 2023 European run featuring Sonata Arctica, who recently warmed-up with their enormously successful, partly even sold out  Arctic Storm Finland Tour.

At the forthcoming 24 shows, the melodic metal icons will be performing alongside Finnish countrymen Stratovarius as well as rising international power metallers and labelmates, Induction.

After two acoustic albums, Sonata Arctica have also secretly worked on a new album going back to electric soundscapes, and today, they are pleased to unveil a first taste of what's to come in spring 2024 via Atomic Fire: Nothing but a return to their golden power metal roots is what awaits fans on the group's forthcoming opus. More details will be announced soon, but for now convince yourselves that the aforementioned promise isn't only warm words and check out their new track, "First In Line".

Stream/purchase the song here, listen below.

Frontman Tony Kakko explains: "This is the first power metal song I wrote for the forthcoming album which is laden with them. Its demo title was 'First In Line' and I managed to stick with it. The song handles the worry about raising a new generation of people with or rather letting an electronic screen - namely tv, pad or some such - do a big part of raising this generation of human beings. We think that we buy ourselves time with these gadgets, but are these devices the right "nanny" for our kids or should we maybe slow down a bit, read books, teach that happiness can be and often is something we reach by stopping and letting go of constant stimulation of all our audiovisual senses? In ways, we are flying blindly with these things. Things are advancing too fast in many ways..."

Nordic Power Metal Titans 2023 with Stratovarius and Induction:

October
14 - Umeå, Sweden - Northern Rockfest @ Energi Arena
15 - Borlänge, Sweden - Cozmoz Arena
16 - Oslo, Norway - Vulkan Arena
17 - Gothenburg, Sweden - Trädgår'n
19 - Stockholm, Sweden - Slaktkyrkan
20 - Roskilde, Germany - Gimle
21 -  Hamburg, Germany - Kulturpalast
22 -  Leipzig, Germany - Hellraiser
24 - Utrecht, Netherlands - TivoliVredenburg (Ronda)
25 -  Saarbrücken, Germany - Garage
26 - Paris, France - Bataclan*
27 - Pratteln, Switzerland - Konzertfabrik Z7
28 - Milan, Italy - Alcatraz
30 -  Munich, Germany - Backstage
31 - Vienna, Austria - Szene

November
1 - Budapest, Hungary - Barba Negra
3 - Athens, Greece - Fuzz Club
4 - Thessaloniki, Greece - Principal Club Theater
6 - Cluj-Napoca, Romania - FORM Space
7 - Bucharest, Romania - Quantic
9 - Brno, Czech Republic - Sono Centrum
10 - Aschaffenburg, Germany - Colos-Saal
11 - Kortrijk, Belgium - Hell's Balls Belgium @ Xpo*
12 - Bochum, Germany - Matrix

* no Induction

Lineup:

Tony Kakko - vocals
Elias Viljanen - guitars
Pasi Kauppinen - bass
Henrik "Henkka" Klingenberg - keyboards
Tommy Portimo - drums

(Photo - Jaakko Manninen)