The Ragged Saints - Sonic Playground Revisited (2020)

After a few years hiatus, Finnish hard rockers The Ragged Saints are coming back with an old school 80s hard rock influenced record. The album, titled ”Sonic Playground Revisited”, contains 10 new songs and will delight not only The Ragged Saints fans, but also fans of bands like Whitesnake, Def Leppard and Ratt to mention a few.

Stylewise, the band continues its path without compromises. They didn’t feel the need to change too much. There’s a bit more keyboards and orchestration on some of the songs and a little synth bass here and there, but it’s the same songwriting team, so the style and sound are pretty much the same as before. Once again the studio was their sandpit, their own sonic playground.

The band has been working on the album on and off for a number of years. It has been a working process since 2013 when the first demos came into being. But the start of the recordings took another year due to personal issues and other projects, giving the band the opportunity to distance themselves a bit and resume another perspective on the song material.

The Ragged Saints was formed in 2011 by guitarists Tomi Julkunen and Toni Bite. After writing bunch of songs, they recruited like-minded singer Markku Kuikka, bassist Jukka Hoffrén and drummer Miikki Kunttu not to reinvent the wheel but to play melodic rock music we all have loved since day one. Shortly after forming, they began working on their first record. The band’s well-received and critically acclaimed debut album ”The Sound Of Breaking Free” was released in 2013.