SONATA ARCTICA, Pythia, Neonfly @Birmingham Institute Library 16/4/13

RTM makes no secret of our love for Neonfly. Over the years the band just keeps on getting better and better. Last year they released the “Outshine The Sun” record, which was immediately one of our favourites of the year. Being on tours like this can only help raise their profile. The band appear to know it too, as they have broken off the recording of album number two to be here tonight. Songs such as “The Enemy,” “Ship With No Sail” and set closer “Morning Star” surely cannot fail to win over an audience such as this and happily the one new song they play “The Heart Of The Sun” gives notice that the sophomore effort might be just as good as the debut. Ones – we very much hope – to watch.

About a year ago we saw Dragonforce make their comeback in this very building. The support band they chose for the evening, which was in the smaller room upstairs, was Pythia. The Londoners came out dressed in armour and featured Emily Ovenden, trained opera singer, as vocalist. We weren’t overly keen on the group then and we still aren’t. They lack the class and guile of bands like Nightwish and while tracks like “The Heartless” are ok, there seems to us, to be something missing.

Melodic Power Metal is perhaps one of rocks oddest genres. One that never seems to cross over into the mainstream, but one that gets the punters in. The Library is full by the time Finlands Sonata Arctica take the stage.

Perhaps surprisingly they have been doing this for getting on for twenty years and there is an easy confidence about the group – led by vocalist Tommy Kakko - throughout. Other things we weren’t expecting from the band were just how much heavier they were live than on record and also how much fun they appeared to be having. You might expect if you just listened to the CD’s the whole thing to be a little po-faced, but not a bit of it! Kakko has clearly been to the Chuck Billy school of playing air guitar with his mic, doing so throughout, while the whole good-fun vibe of the evening is topped off by a spot of Russian dancing during “Cinderblox.”

Of course, it doesn’t matter how much fun the band are having if the songs don’t cut it, thankfully Arctica have good and interesting tunes in abundance. Roughly half of the set comes from latest album “The Stones Grow In Her Name” including opener “Only The Broken Hearts Make You Beautiful” and the superb  “I Have A Right” which features some fine harmony vocals.

It just wouldn’t be Power Metal though, if there wasn’t some epic balladry, and Sonata have a couple of these, pianos get used liberally in “In The Day” while towards the end they give “Tallulah” an airing, a massive lighters-in-the-air thing, which sees Kakko joking that the men in the crowd might want to go and something else for a while.

“Don’t Say A Word” brings the evening to a close, completely with a slightly daft outro, involving Vodka, which for our money is the only thing that didn’t quite work all night. Supremely talented musicians - Elias Viljanen on lead guitar perhaps the pick of the bunch – Sonata Arctica don’t need gimmicks. They were excellent this evening. One of those nights where you go in to a gig quite liking a band and come out a fan.