Pariah's Child is the eighth studio album by Finnish power metal band Sonata Arctica. It was released on March 28, 2014 by Nuclear Blast. It is the first Sonata Arctica release with new bassist Pasi Kauppinen, who replaced Marko Paasikoski.

In a June 2013 interview concerning keyboardist Henrik Klingenberg's own band Silent Voices, he confirmed Sonata Arctica would go into recording for their eighth studio album in September 2013. Concerning the progress and style of this new album, he also mentioned "The bulk of the album, we already have the demos..." as well as "we want to focus on making songs that work live."

During rehearsals, Henrik mentioned on his blog that songs they were rehearsing for the new album seemed to hearken towards Sonata Arctica's earlier days, and that they would try to record a 10-minute track. He also commented that, differently from their previous album, they recorded everything at the same place, as a band.

On January 9, 2014, the band announced via their official website that the album would be titled Pariah's Child and would be released on March 28, 2014.

On February 12, the band released the video for "The Wolves Die Young" via Radio Rock.

Kakko has described Pariah's Child as "the album that should have been done after Reckoning Night besides Unia." He also commented:

The album also marks the return of wolf-themed songs, which were absent in their previous album, Stones Grow Her Name. According to Kakko, "wolf is just once again a metaphor, for instance, for fear and processing it in your life. Fear make people do things. Or actually denying the fact that you fear something."

He also commented on the album artwork upon the release announcement:

The art was once again made by Janne Pitkänen, also known as Toxic Angel.

The opening track and first single, "The Wolves Die Young", was described by Henrik as a typical Sonata Arctica song. It was one of the first songs to be written for the album.

"Running Lights" was originally planned as a Japanese bonus track, but the band was so pleased with its final form that they decided to make it a regular track. Tommy Portimo described his drum work at the track as a tribute to Jörg Michael. Tony said he wrote the lyrics on a train ride to the studio the day after Lou Reed died, and the track was in a way a tribute to him.

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Wikipedia