SYMFONIA: In Paradisum

Produced by Timo Tolkki
Released: February 2011

As the editor of Loud Online, you’d think that I’d keep all the cream and palm off the crap to other writers. But as it turns out I apparently love listening to terrible heavy metal because here I am reviewing the latest turd from Timo Tolkki. Once the brains behind the most over-rated and overblown power metal band in Europe, Tolkki eventually departed Stratovarius after a spectacular nervous breakdown. With the inglorious passing of his subsequent Revolution Renaissance project, his latest vehicle is a band featuring cast-offs from every other power metal band that’s ever existed. Also featuring ex-Angra/Shaman/Looking-Glass Self vocalist André Matos, keyboard player Mikko Härkin from Sonata Arctica, ex-Stratovarius bassist Jari Kainulainen and drummer Uli Kusch from every band in Europe, Symfonia is exactly what you’d expect from a group so named and containing such people. And it sucks.

In a word, In Paradisum is rubbish. In a sentence, it’s predictable, un-imaginative, uninspiring and bland, featuring the same ideas Tolkki ran out of more than a decade ago. If the name of the band isn’t warning enough, the cover art should suffice. Graphics like this belong on Final Fantasy games, not metal albums. The songs are dreary, without a single original element. Matos sings way higher than any human should be allowed and while it’s a credit to him that he does so without actually going off-key, a register this high becomes annoying very, very quickly – and this album is almost an hour long. Kusch phones in his tracks and Kainulainen does pretty much what he always did: stands around in the background of promo shots. Härkin is allowed some of the spotlight but, let’s face it, Janne Wirman he ain’t. Naturally, the real focus is Tolkki, which is sad because, like Yngwie Malmsteen, he’s simply relying on his name alone these days. But at least Yngwie retains the ability to make your jaw hit the floor once in a while, often when you least expect it. Tolkki can’t be bothered, instead content to merely serve up ten tracks of risably awful power metal pap. Every track on here could have come from any of the bands that these guys have been in before and Kusch alone has made this album dozens of times, and much, much better. No wonder he doesn’t seem interested. Neither should anyone else.

1. Fields of Avalon
2. Come by the Hills
3. Santiago
4. Alayna
5. Forevermore
6. Pilgrim Road
7. In Paradisum
8. Rhapsody in Black
9. I Walk in Neon
10. Don’t Let Me Go

Rating: 20%

STRATOVARIUS: Elysium

Produced by Matias Kupiainen
Released: 2011

For everyone who's championed them over the years, I've always found Stratovarius to be a decidedly uneven prospect, with their obvious abilities hindered by a propensity for over-the-top histrionics and a need to be neo-Classical at the cost of all else, fuelled mainly by Timo Tolkki's desire to show the world what a flash guitarist he is.


It appears that with the final, ignomious departure of the tragic Tolkki, the band's creative centre now revolves around 27-year old guitar prodigy Matias Kupiainen, a man who was only just born when Stratovarius first formed. It has never been more clear that new blood can inject life into a tired old band than here: not only did Kupiainen write the majority of the tracks, he also produced, and a remarkable job he has done.

There hasn't been much of an effort at reinventing themselves here. Really, Elysium is Startovarius refining their sound: winding back the overly flouncy keyboards and the overt neo-classicism in favour of song-craft and consistency. With four out of five members of the band contributing tracks, Elysium is the most diverse Stratovarius album in many years, or possibly ever.The first five songs are pretty standard, if solid, power metal songs and the opener is definitely strong. The tone is set early: Jens Johansson's keyboards help fill out the sound rather than dominate it, coming forward only to solo or trade-off with Kupiainen, Lauri Porra's bass is discernible and, perhaps most importantly, Timo Kotipelto's voice is fine. I've had issues with him in the past because he often goes off-key -- either on purpose or because he's stretching his range -- but here he's spot on. "Lifetime in a Moment" makes the transition from good to great for Elysium, where simplicity meets majesty, and "Event Horizon" is not just blazingly fast but heavy, much heavier than usual.

The true highlight of the album however is the title track itself, a sweeping 18-minute epic that dwarfs not only the rest of Elysium but possibly everything they've ever done. Normally a track this long by almost anyone would leave me screaming for the exits, but this is the true display of brilliance that possibly everyone in Stratovarius has always strived for. Every member shines, even the usually almost invisible Porra gets a solo, and Kotipelto has never sounded better. The ebb and flow of the song's three main sections mesh perfectly and the song works so well it doesn't seem anywhere near as long as it is

I never thought I'd write so much about a Stratovarius album without most of it being ridicule, but they deserve only high marks for this.

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

Rating: 85%

KOTIPELTO: Waiting for the Dawn

Released: 2002

Someone once criticised Bruce Dickinson for making a solo album that sounded exactly like the other band he had been in, and while that was true, it could be sort of forgiven because eventually his albums were better than theirs. Timo Kotipelto is best known as being the singer for Stratovarius and his debut solo effort bears little or no distinguishing features from that group.

Unlike Bruce Dickinson, however, Timo seems to be running on a zero level of inspiration that’s even spilled over onto Derek Riggs, whose surprisingly unspectacular art graces the cover here. It’s true that Kotipelto has gathered a breathtaking array of Europe’s finest metalheads about him to create his Ancient Egyptian myth cycle -- some of whom include Roland Grapow, Michael Romeo, Sami Virtanen and Janne Warman -- but it’s also true that even they can’t save this from being exactly what the promo sheets promised Waiting for the Dawn would not be, and that’s bland, boring rock.

Personally, I can’t stand Timo’s voice because sometimes he sounds like he sings flat on purpose, to see if anyone will notice, but that’s not why I think this is ordinary. I think is ordinary because it is ordinary, and that’s that.

1. Intro
2. Travel Through Time
3. Beginning
4. Lord of Eternity
5. Knowledge and Wisdom
6. Battle of the Gods
7. Beauty Has Come
8. Vizier
9. Chosen by Re
10. Waiting for the Dawn
11. Arise
12. Movement of the Nile

Rating: 30%