Artist: Stratovarius
Label: Edel Records
Release: 2011
Runtime: 56:26
Rating: 3/5
They say “13” is an unlucky number. For Stratovarius though, that won’t hold true, even though their new record “Elysium” is, all told, their 13th studio album.
Yep. The Finnish progressive/power metallers kicked off the band way back in 1984, but they didn’t reach fame and recognition (or at least the feeling of it) until the maestro Timo Kotipelto came bouncing in, grabbed the mic and showed what truly excellent singing sounds like (we’ve witnessed that voice firsthand in Ljubljana, too, when Stratovarius warmed up the crowd at the end of November 2005 for the evening’s stars, HammerFall).
But back to the new release, which goes by the name “Elysium”. It saw the light of day a good week ago, on January 12, 2011, to be exact, and it serves up nine fresh, original tracks.
The first track, Darkest Hours, became the 1st single even before the album itself came out, already giving a taste of what to expect from the new record. In it, the band sings about the negativity of the world, the dark side of life, and adds positive messages with an upbeat-sounding chorus, saying that favorable solutions can always be found, anywhere and no matter the situation.
What’s all too well known for a band of Stratovarius’ caliber is that there’s just no making an album without ballads. So with their calm opening rhythms, you’ll find quite a few of them on this record too, at times almost overdoing it, though only some of them build up the atmosphere, which then drops off with the vocals and changes its temperament again. A typical example is the track Lifetime in a Moment, while the song Under Flaming Skies sticks in your ears without any trouble! At three minutes and 51 seconds, it’s also the shortest track on the whole album. The third and fourth tracks on the record (Infernal Maze and Fairness Justified) recall their older releases, especially the album “Elements pt.1”, while The Game Never Ends sounds at moments like a straight-up copy of the tune Hunting High and Low (from the album “Infinite”). The real progressive power returns toward the end of the album, when Stratovarius hit with Event Horizon, which wraps up with a quiet countdown to zero. Just when you think that’s the end of the album, the title track Elysium kicks in, a proper mix of everything the band can do – from shifting moods through countless ups and downs, from slow melodies to switch-ups with faster rhythms, from soloing to guitar-vs-keyboard solo duels between Kupiainen and Johansson’s keys! That’s all well and good, the guys are making an effort, but 18 minutes for a single song is, like it or not, too much, especially for the expressive range of the Stratovarius crew, which is too trivial, formulaic and predictable to pull off an implant of epic trimmings and stretch songs beyond roughly 7:00-8:00 minutes.
The whole album runs almost 57 minutes! Overall it’s not a bad album, it just feels like we’ve heard all of this somewhere before! So, nothing outstanding, just like with the previous album “Polaris”. Then again, that’s hard to expect and/or even demand from Stratovarius today, after such a pile of released albums.
It’s definitely a listenable package, but what interests us more is probably how the band will sound on the tour that hits our capital in just a few days, where Stratovarius will share the stage with the German legends Helloween.
Lineup
Timo Kotipelto – vocals
Matias Kupiainen – guitar
Jens Johansson – keyboards
Lauri Porra – bass guitar
Jörg Michael – drums
Production
Matias Kupiainen
Tracklist
1. Darkest Hours
2. Under Flaming Skies
3. Infernal Maze
4. Fairness Justified
5. The Game Never Ends
6. Lifetime in a Moment
7. Move the Mountain
8. Event Horizon
9. Elysium
