Concert Review: Sonata Arctica

Seattle, WA

February 14, 2008

Sonata Arctica is one of my favorite bands of all time. When I started listening to heavy metal about four years ago, they are the ones that introduced me to this wonderful genre of symphonic power metal. I think Reckoning Night was the first CD I ever owned that featured keyboards (I grew up listening to punk and alternative, go figure)

When I heard they were coming, I immediately ran out to buy a ticket, thinking that the show was sure to sell out. When I arrived, I immediately reckognized that this was not the case. The only power metal show I have previously been to was Nightwish, and it was sold out at a 2000+ person venue. But then again, Nightwish does get occasional play on the radio and is much more well know. At El Corazon, which holds about 500 people, the floor was about 1/3 full two hours after doors opened. When the band came on, it was half full. Luckily, this didn't have an impact on the band and they played an amazing and interactive show.

Unia came out about a year ago, and it unfortunately still has not grown on me. Almost every song is slowed down and it simply doesn't feel like Sonata Arctica. Not a single track stands out above the others and "Paid In Full" was an extremely odd choice for their single; it is mainstream and boring. So, before the concert I prayed that the band would stay away from these dull songs during their live set; I know, I know, it's ridiculous that a band wouldn't play their new material live. I guess a part of me just hoped that they knew Unia was far from their best album. Just as I suspected, about half of their set comprised of Unia tracks. Here's the unfortunate setlist:

In Black & White

Paid In Full

Victoria's Secret

The World's Forgotten, The World's Forbidden

8th Commandment

Caleb

Wolf & Raven

Shamandalie

Black Sheep

We Will Rock You

It Won't Fade

Don't Say A Word

The Cage

After seeing the show I realized that it wasn't terrible that they played so many Unia songs, it was simply a matter of they order they played them in. The songs when fast, slow, fast, slow and because of this, the concert didn't seem to flow very smoothly. Also, playing only one track from both Ecliptica and Reckoning Night was very disappointing. Every track on RN is a masterpiece and to see more of it live would have been wonderful. Another downside for me was that they played neither of-in my opinion-their two best songs, "Champagne Bath" and "Wildfire". I know, I'm being picky. It was a wonderful show, they played perfectly and I can die happy now that I have seen them live. But talking to a friend after the show she said to me, 'It was really good but last time I saw them they didn't play any slow songs.' To which I replied, 'Last time you saw them, they barely had any slow songs'

My First Computer Build

For the last year or so I've been playing with the idea of building my own computer. I've always loved PC games, and my laptop is just no longer cutting it. I have been looking at parts for months now and have been paying very close attention to new hardware releases and advances in technology. My goal was to build a PC that was capable of playing new games on full settings without any problems....for less than $900.

A new decent gaming computer can cost at least $1200 not including the monitor, mouse, speakers, etc. For my build I will be purchasing all new components-including a monitor-with the exception of a hard drive that I took from our old home PC (I already own a keyboard and mouse). The following components I chose for the price/performance ratio and overall consumer satisfaction (based on reviews from Newegg.com) Here goes:

19" Hanns-G Widescreen Monitor

Most gamers nowadays are playing with 22"-24" monitors that can cost easily over $250. I think that anything bigger than 20" is excessive and not worth the extra money. 1440x900 resolution is plenty for me. Price: $165

Cooler Master Centurion Case

ATX Mid is the most common size for cases and this one was cheap with great reviews and has plenty of fans to keep everything cool. Price: $35

 

Corsair 450W Power Supply

The power supply is the heart of the computer so I didn't want to get a cheap one. Corsair is supposed to be the most reliable brand so I knew my money was going to good use. I don't need more than 350W to power my system so this leaves plenty of room for upgrades. Price: $80

MSI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

This is one of the few motherboards that is below $100 and has a 5-star (egg) rating. Price: $75

AMD Athlon X2 2.8Ghz CPU

Like any product that is offered by only two companies, there is a war going on between Intel and AMD. Intel is supposedly more efficient and less power-hungry. But their chips cost on average 50% more than AMD. I want the most bang for my buck so a 2.8Ghz AMD for $140 is a much sweeter deal than a 2.66Ghz Intel for $200. Price: $140

2GB Mushkin RAM

1 GB is plenty for XP but with games more is always better. Price: $50

Lite-On  OEM DVD-RW Drive

It's an optical drive. Nothing special. Price: $28

Gigabyte 512MB 8800GT

The 8800GT is being called the best price vs performance out of any GPU in history. To sweeten the deal, this one comes factory overclocked and has a huge fan on it and is still cheaper than the competition. Price: $260

 

Slowly but surely, the parts started to arrive. Finally the motherboard came bringing my wait to an end. I've been reading/researching/watching videos on how to put computers together for a couple months now so I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into. After spending some time with the case and figuring out the fans and front panel, I was ready to get started. The case is called 'tool free' so it would be a pretty straightforward task with screws required only to secure the power supply and motherboard.

After screwing the the motherboard, I added the RAM and CPU. It was extremely simple and took me less than two minutes. I heard that it's a good idea to first power on the system with minimum components just to make sure everything works. So I just had the one stick of RAM and no video card for starters.

Looks good except for that ugly, huge IDE cable for my HDD.

Everything was plugged in and ready to go. I hooked up the monitor and...it was working! The MSI screen popped up and then....BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH! It said something along the lines of "Windows has detected an error with your hard drive and must shut down to prevent errors" That sounds very, very bad. I plugged in my laptop to check what it meant. Apparently you can't move Windows from one machine to another without reinstalling it. It makes sense when you think about it. Windows had all the drivers/hardware details for the old computer installed in it so it is incompatible with the new stuff. Luckily I had an extra copy of XP Pro lying around and was able to get the computer to boot from the CD.

Windows being installed, not a BSOD

It was really exciting to see my new computer up and running. Windows took only about 20 minutes to install and after that I was good to go. After making sure everything was working properly and there were no glaring errors I powered it down to add the extra RAM stick and video card. Both popped in quickly and after I tied up the extra cables I had a nice blue and red component interior.

 

The huge fan is definitely work the extra PCI-E slot it takes up.

The video card was working and now it came time to test it out. I installed Oblivion (which took about 5 minutes thanks to my processor) and fired it up. With 8x AA (no jagged lines anywhere) and 16x AF (no blurry patches in the distance) and at 1440 x 900 resolution the game looked simply stunning. Of course, that's comparing it to my laptop which ran it at 1024 x 768 with no AA or AF but still, I know now how it's meant to be played.

 

 

***Update: After two goods weeks of solid use, my GPU died! I couldn't play any game for more than 5 minutes without it crashing. I RMA'd it and decided to go with the superclocked EVGA 8800GT. It's clocked at 650mhz, less than the Gigabyte but still more than standard. It has been running great, with the exception of how hot it gets. Luckily this was the only part I had to RMA and I figured a perfect build is pretty hard to accomplish.