Every now and again I’m just going to need to share album covers. I had to gush about Sonata Arctica’s “The Ninth Hour” last time, but now I have to gush about Sonata Arctica’s “Stones Grow Her Name.” I mean, look at it.

Let’s take a few minutes and think about all the reasons we might want to write about this. Why is the arm broken? Its splintered, which makes it clear the woman figure is wooden. I can’t help noticing the places where her “roots” seem to grow around the dome of piano keys.

They seem to grow upwards, too, into the background image, which looks a bit like wings. And the bitten, rotting apple replacing the head–an Eve allusion? Plus, if you look closely at the piano, the keys break off into fragments and disappear. If I’m not mistaken, the woman figure is disintegrating from the knee.

Who knows, maybe it’s the Garden of Eden under there. Why has no one written a steampunk retelling of Adam and Eve yet?

Favorites from this album: “The Day” (a heart-wrencher about tsunami devastation in Japan) and “Cinderblox” (which can only be called “horny banjo metal”).