| CD REVIEW Stratovarius |
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Band: Stratovarius How weird sometimes the tribulations of successful Rock bands! To say Stratovarius from Finland belong to a higher echelon in the music business would be something of an understatement, but in 2003-2004 things started going sour. The band had just released their Elements Part 1 and Part 2 albums during 2003, and the somewhat more complex structures of the music were received rather cool by the fans for its somewhat excessive soloing by guitarist Timo Tolkki, and sales figures duely showed a decline compared to previous albums. In spite of that, the band then signed to Sanctuary for a 3-record deal worth over 3,5 million dollars!Next up, Tolkki announced 3 band members were to exit, leaving only bassist Jari Kainulainen and keyboardist Jens Johansson. To replace Timo Kotipelto, he enlisted 3-octave female singer Katriina Wiila (of Aurora), drummer Jörg Michael to be replaced by Jens’ brother Anders. However the latter left within a week of joining, following the negative backlash on the line-up changes (and none to tasteful pictures involving animal blood in the media) by the fanbase. The line-up changes weren’t really to the liking of the label either, who’d signed a contract with all members at the time of the Elements albums, and therefore demanded a restitution of a million Euros of the advance payments! The band, in its “classic” line-up was also still under legal obligation to perform at the late February 2004 Piorno Rock festival in Spain. The festival appearance indeed went ahead in the classic line-up, with Tolkki obviously drunk, and being pissed on by Jens Johansson during the show. The day after, Tolkki was attacted by an unknown person, whom punched him in the face and stabbed him twice in the arm with a box cutter knife. He later commented he didn’t know whether he’d like to continue Strativarius. However, the guitarist then got back together with drummer Jörg Michael to start some recordings in Germany during late March, finishing those recordings in early April in Finland. But on April 10 the guitarist was admitted to the hospital with suicidal tendencies and chronic depression. He got out in early May, and immediately announced he’d released Wiila from her contract, issuing the statement: “Stratovarius is Timo Kotipelto, Jens Johansson, Jörg Michael, Jari Kainulainen and Timo Tolkki. If This line-up is not possible, then there cannot be any band called Stratovarius.” So, the band mended their differences, played the European Summer festivals as originally planned, and convened in December 2005 to decide on the bands future…deciding to go ahead and record a new album, the simply titled Strativarius! In June 2006, they fired Kainulainen, replacing him with Lauri Porra (of Kotipelto, Warmen, Gashouse Garden, Tunnelvision, and Sinergy fame). Their label Sanctuary was already getting into financial troubles in late 2004, and the September 2005 released album saw the band’s album sales drop further on an international level. Guitarist Timo Tolkki (still troubled by the 2004 events) took that rather personal. Then an ongoing legal struggle slowed the band down for an indefinite time. Undaunted, the band members self-financed the demo recordings for a new album in late 2006, and entered Helsinki’s Sonic Pump Studios in late February 2007 for the recording of their upcoming Revolution Renaissance album, uncertain of when that album would see release! In December 2006 Tolkki had announced he was working on the material for a solo album, initially to be titled Saana – Warrior Of Light, and a project which was then signed to Frontiers Records as Revolution Renaissance (oh-oh, if you don’t feel a weird thing a-coming now…?), but did this outside the knowledge of his Stratovarius mates. In October 2007, he sent the others an e-mail that he didn’t want to continue anymore, being tired of Stratovarius, and wanting to concentrate on writing an opera. He also letit be known that he prefered the others not contact him to try and convince him to change his mind. Later Tolkki stated none of the other members even tried to talk him out of quitting with Stratovarius. It has now turned out that there was not even any truth in all the “petty disagreements” that were supposedly goin’ on between the Stratovarius members as mentioned in the review of the RR debut album (posted 22/06/2008). In fact, what happened is that the band were willing enough to wait untill the legal hassles they were in were all behind ‘em before goin’ on, and Tolkki wasn’t! Quite single-handedly he decided to take the material Stratovarius had been working on, call it completely his own, and then sell it off as his own as well…taking a nice bit of money in the exchange, with the promise that he would prevent Stratovarius (whose activities were still prevented due to their legal hassles with Sanctuary) from being active in that same period, for marketing reasons. The thing is, Sanctuary were showing themselves ready to settle in mid 2007, but Tolkki’s announcement ruined that, of course, leaving the remaining members of the band with a huge debt, which (in combination with all the other unpleasantness) would have caused most people to quitting the music business altogether! But not thése guys! Nah, they’re seriously infected with the music-making bug, and in October 2008 they announced they had recruited guitar wonder Matias Kupainen (previously of Fist In Fetus and Sinkage) for upcoming live appearances, and were already working on the matterial for a 2009 album! Tolkki then made a rather controversial move, announcing he was to record another album with former Stratovarius members Tuomo Lassila (drums) and Anti Ikonen (keyboards) with the tentative title Return To Dreamscape (after the 1994 Stratovarius album Dreamscape, and with a projected release date of September 2009) and plans to let the fans decide the name of the project, stating “If the fans decide that it should be called Strativarius, then it will. Then I will face consequences,” additionally saying “…that will be one interesting trial, I tell you that!” (pffftt…megalomania anyone? Talk about sour grapes from a schizophrenic vine!!!). In April bassist Jari Kainulainen added to the stupidity by joining the project, making it’s line-up exactly the same as on the Dreamspace album. When listening to Stratovarius’ new Sympho/Prog Power Metal piece, I have to say I don’t miss Tolkki at all. Kupianen is quite capable of playing those Neo-classical solos, but in his favour, he doesn’t exagerate ‘em, and both he and the keyboarder leave room for each other to express themselves without making the album a too complex whole! And, of course the band occasionally goes slightly calmer for a power ballad (check “Winter Skies”, but even more so album closer “When Mountains Fall” for the most evident examples). I’ve found no websites with current material posted (not even on myspace.com/officialstratovarius where you’ll find 6 older tracks for your audio introduction to the band), but I suppose you should be able to hear samples of all tracks at amazon.com! Normally, this album should get a really decent rating, but what’s costing it points is the fact that E.A.R. Music has deemed it necessary to protect their material from being ripped onto the Internet through journalists by having fade-out moments during each song, almost effectively killing the mood the guys the guys made the trouble of building up with their fine music! 88/100 Tony. |