An ice-filled back-drop made a strong contrast to the best (so far) weather of the festival. It was time for Sonata Arctica.

Sadly, I have to start out with a complaint. I'm thinking about the sound, which was so bad it should almost be illegal. Almost all you could hear were the drums which were trying to break through the speakers, or so it seemed. There was a little bit of vocal sound, even less of the guitar, and the keyboards were almost only audible when nothing else was playing. This did not help the show, considering there are so many small details in their music which got lost.
A couple of songs did manage to get through though, like Kingdom For A Heart, Replica, Fullmoon and Don't Say A Word, which everyone clapped along to.
Not considering the sound for a moment, I must hand it to the band for giving us a good and lively performance, although at times I did feel that this was something I had seen before.
At the end of the show, Tony Kakko stood up in his usual way and said that it was just about that time where he usually asks us what it is we need. The crowd gave an enthusiastic reply by loudly shouting "Vodka!", and so Sonata Arctica ended their show with the merry sing-a-long song simply stating "We need some vodka".

The crowd did enjoy the show, but in my opinion it only reached an ok. It wasn't bad, but I have seen much better Sonata shows in the past.