Gather the Faithful

Gather the Faithful is the first record from the project Jani Liimatainen began after leaving Sonata Arctica, where he had been a founding member from 1996 until the split in 2007. He gathered Timo Kotipelto of Stratovarius on vocals, his former bandmate Mikko Härkin on keyboards, Jukka Koskinen of Norther and Wintersun on bass, and Jani Hurula on drums. But one man governs this album. Liimatainen wrote the music and the lyrics for all eleven songs by himself. Recording took place across studios in Finland; Jimmy Westerlund mixed it in Los Angeles and Eddy Schreyer mastered it in Burbank. The release order is unusual. Japan came first, on 22 July 2009 through Avalon; Europe followed on 28 August via Frontiers, and the United States on 11 September. It opens with "My Queen of Winter," moves through the six-minute "Oceans of Regret," the title track and "Morpheus in a Masquerade," and runs from "Tale Untold" into "Elegantly Broken" — fifty minutes. The subject is love and loss, and a film of melancholy lies over much of it. Looking back years later, Liimatainen admitted that as the first album where he wrote everything alone, he had been a little too ambitious, trying to prove he could write genuinely good, complex songs.