2009 at Tico Tico Studio (drums and bass) Fantom Studios and Magic-7 Studio (guitars) Lanceland 2 and Kakkos-studio (keyboards) Studio 57 (hammond organ) Kakkos-studio (vocals) Rock Valley-Studios (cello) Great Sounds Studio (female vocals)
The Days of Grays is the sixth full-length studio album by Finnish power metal band Sonata Arctica. The album was released in South America on 8 September 2009, on 16 September in Finland, 18 September in Europe and 22 September in North America through Nuclear Blast.[6] The special edition of the album includes the album along with an orchestral CD as a digipak.[7][8]
It is the first album with guitarist Elias Viljanen and also the first since 1999's Ecliptica in which vocalist Tony Kakko also plays the keyboards.
a bit darker and maybe not so complex as [2007's] "Unia". Nevertheless, it's definitely not a back-to-the-roots album with fast power metal. All the trademark SONATA stuff is on there, solos, lots of singing [and] some slower songs.
The first single from the album is "The Last Amazing Grays". It was released by Nuclear Blast Records only in Finland on 26 August. The band ran a fan art contest to choose the artwork for their second announced single, "Flag in the Ground" which the press release calls "an uplifting story about a young couple fighting their way to freedom and their own land in North America back in early 1800s."[9] The winner of the contest was Simo Heikkinen from Finland.[10]
The name for The Days of Grays apparently took a very long time to come to as the band had a name for the record that was deemed more appropriate "for a death metal band or something" according to Henrik Klingenberg. In a French interview, Tony Kakko stated that the original name was Deathaura, the name of a song on the album.[11]
The track "Juliet" continues the so called Caleb saga, a series of songs that started on Silence's "The End of This Chapter", was continued on Reckoning Night's "Don't Say a Word", Unia's "Caleb" and would be later continued on The Ninth Hour's "Till Death's Done Us Apart"[12] and Talviyö's "The Last of the Lambs".[13]
"Everything Fades to Gray" features the lyrics "It's not fair, it's not fair, there was a time now" relating to the Twilight Zone episode Time Enough at Last and "The Truth Is Out There" is about the popular TV series The X-Files.