Artist: Sonata Arctica
Release Title: The Ninth Hour
Label: Nuclear Blast
Cat #: NB37082
Release Date: 2016
Duration: Album 
Format: CD
Packaging Type: Jewel Case

The Ninth Hour is the ninth studio album by Finnish power metal band Sonata Arctica.

The album opener and first single is "Closer to an Animal", a track that Kakko worked on two years before the album recording and which was brought around midway through the sessions. It has a reprise, titled "On the Faultline (Closure to an Animal)", which closes the regular edition of the album and marks keyboardist Henrik Klingenberg's first usage of an acoustic piano with the band. He mentions the influence of 80s music in his performance at the track.

Recommended if you like: Stratovarius, Edguy, Blind Guardian, Firewind, HammerFall, Helloween, Dragonland, Avantasia, Rhapsody of Fire, Sabaton, DragonForce

Tracklist:

1 Closer To An Animal
2 Life
3 Fairytale
4 We Are What We Are
5 Till Death's Done Us Apart
6 Among The Shooting Stars
7 Rise A Night
8 Fly, Navigate, Communicate
9 Candle Lawns
10 White Pearl, Black Oceans [Part II]
11 On The Faultline (Closure To An Animal)