Jani Liimatainen

Jani Liimatainen — born in Finland in 1980 — was Sonata Arctica's founding guitarist and is today one of the most sought-after composers in Finnish melodic metal. He was in the band from 1996 and recorded the albums that defined Finnish power metal of the late 1990s and early 2000s: Ecliptica (1999), Silence (2001), Winterheart's Guild (2003), Reckoning Night (2004) and Unia (2007). His fast, harmonised riffs, alongside the keyboard in the foreground, are constitutive of that sound. He left in 2007 in circumstances that had nothing musical about them: he refused to perform Finland's compulsory military service and also the alternative civilian service, which resulted in prosecution and in his being unable to leave the country — making the band's international touring impossible. It is a rare case in metal, in which a musician's career was interrupted by a matter of conscientious objection. Afterwards he built a second career of equal weight: he is part of Insomnium and The Dark Element, and works as composer and producer for other bands of the Scandinavian circuit — a path that made him more present in the Finnish scene after leaving than during his time in the band.