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| | Polaris | | | Music Artist : | | Stratovarius | | Music Style : | | General | | Record Label : | | Eagle Records | | Release Date : | | 2009-05-26 | | Store Price : | | $13.98 | | Artistopia's Price: $13.98 | | Usually ships in 24 hours | | |
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CD Tracks/Songs
Disc 11. Deep Unknown
2. Falling Star
3. King of Nothing
4. Blind
5. Winter Skies
6. Forever is Today
7. Higher We Go
8. Somehow Precious
9. Emancipation Part I - Dusk
10. Emancipation Part II - Dawn
11. Mountains Fall
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Other Artist Albums
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Customer Reviews of This Album/CD |
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 Flawless
Submitted on: 2009-09-30 |
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| This was my first exposure to Stratovarius, and has made me fan. The songs are great, production excellent, musicianship very skilled. What more can you ask from a band. Perfect amount of shredding, not to much, not to little (although I would not have minded more, the guitar player Matias, is excellent). The album has a great feel, a good variety of tempo's give the album room to breath. Nothing rushed, very dynamic, and flowing. Love this album, one of the best I've heard in a while. |
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 And so it comes to pass...
Submitted on: 2009-09-15 |
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... that Stratovarius made an album without Timo Tolki on six string strafing. So is it still Stratovarius? Well, I'll leave that debate to others and just plough into a review of the album;
# The album kicks off with Deep Unknown which is a fine tune totally in keeping with the Strats vision. In fact this album doesn't really seem to have taken any departures at all from their signature motifs of speedy riffs, lots of keys and a hammering drum attack all leavened with Timo Kotipeltos' highly strung vocal stylings. It's all somewhat highly strung mega-goth-speed-metal with goth twinges, the latter more by default than any real gothic leanings of the band itself. After a number of plays I think Deep Unknown is a good track to sample to see if you want to buy this album, ditto for Blind though for me this track has too much emphasis on the drums to the detriment of enjoyability.
# Production by the band and having keyboardist Jens Johansson involved in the engineering has made sure that what you are getting is the bands musical vision. The sound is quite clean as you'd expect and kudos to Jens for not beefing up the keyboard sound until it drowns out everything else.
# The album does contain a number of mellow tracks. But then the Strats have been doing that for quite some time, the lumbering Winter Skies being a good example of where the band are at with this tangent at present and King of Nothing being a bit too plodding for its own good.
# The stepping aside (or call it what you will) of Timo Tolki has meant that the other band members have had to come to the party in the songwriting department. Of course most Strat fans know that the majority of the past writing has been done by Tolki and Kotipelto and most of the bands fans knew that the latter could pen a decent enough tune himself. But perhaps less people have heard the other works of Jens Johansson - albums like Sonic Winter for instance - and so his contribution to this disc will perhaps surprise many. But as I alluded to earlier, the absence of the bands main writer on this release has produced negligible effect. If you liked Infinite then you'll like this. And as for the new guitarist - Matias Kupiainen - just check out some of the trade offs with Jens on tunes like Forever is Today. And at least this way the royalties might be shared a bit more evenly!
All up an album that stands alongside their earlier albums and is probably marginally better than the last, self titled, studio effort though it doesn't rise to the realms of Visions, which would appear to be an album the band will never quite be able to surpass. Ultimately this album is a victory of sorts as it could very easily not have ever gotten made and it would be a shame to no longer be able to hear these guys perform in a group which obviously means so much to them. Fans of the hard rock musings of Stratovarius should buy with confidence even if it's not their best work. |
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Stratovarius At Their Best !!!
Submitted on: 2009-08-07 |
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Forget Timo!
I personally thought the last three Stratovarius CD's were lacking something.
THIS CD ROCKS !!! Very talented group of artists. Their chemistry works perfectly with Matias (guitar) and Lauri (bass). This is only the second reveiw I've written, the first being for Threshold's 2007 "Dead Reckoning". I will only write for a CD that I feel that strongly about. There's not a single flaw in the writing or production of this masterpiece! My favorite tracks are "Falling Star", "King of Nothing", "Winter Skies", "Somehow Precious", and both "Emancipation Suites". If you're into mind-expanding, prog-metal...then check this out !!! |
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 Not too bad, really...but certainly not the old Strato....
Submitted on: 2009-07-18 |
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As I finally bought this album, I must say that there are some great riffs in each song by Jens and the new guitarist. Amazing stuff, really. As a keyboardist, it is really neat to hear what other keyboardists keepin coming up with, album after album.
The more I listen to this album, there is certainly much more commercialism with this release than anything in the past. While this may speak to the mainstream and sell more albums, it also takes away from the true nature of this band (IMHO). The albums of old (really, anything that Timo Tolkki was involved with), seemed so much deeper and were put together so well. He certainly defined the sound of the band. There are times that it still sounds like he is playing though, and that is good. Most of the time, this album sounds like an amped up version of something Timo Kotipelto (lead singer) would do solo. 'Higher We Go' is a great example of this. Just listen to his last release (Serenity) and you will see what I mean.
There are many parts of this album that actually sound like Sonata Arctica to me, and they cited Stratovarius as influences. This to me sounds much like Sonata Arctica's earlier releases. Listen to songs like 'False News Travels Fast', 'Land of the Free' from Sonata Arctica and you will agree. Lots of commercialism here, but the lyrics seem so 'un-Strato' to me. While this is not a bad thing, it does take away for those of us who remember Strato in their Destiny, Infinite, Visions and even Dreamspace days......
This is good stuff though and this release proves that these guys can still play the stuffing out of their instruments. Great musicianship all the way through, sometimes mind-boggling.....
Their opening song has many tempo and rhythm changes in it, not unlike 'False News Travels Fast' from Sonata Artica. The choir vocal stylings are remeniscent of Queen too...lots of influences here.
Overall, I give this a 3 for rating, but please check out the album. It is very good and I am sure that I will enjoy it. |
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Refreshingly Great
Submitted on: 2009-06-05 |
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I was very satisfied with my purchase of this album. Being someone who has every single album of this band, after Element's Pt 2 and "Stratovarius" I was kinda wondering what was going on over there amongst the members. Then with the whole Tolkki scandal and his departure, I was even more worried about what would happen next. This album I only found out about a month before release because after checking their site over and over again with no meaningful updates, I figured it was pretty much over...
Boy was I wrong and happy that I was! This album is amazing! My personal favorite is King of Nothing. Reminded me of a Dream Theater'ish sound, Jorg on the drums in this song, and on the album as a whole, are great and a refreshing change from the constant double bass with snare hits going at 3 per second (used to be amazed by that but once it inspired me to play drums, realized it is blah when it is all you do). Only about a quarter of the songs are traditional speedy power metal songs. The remaining are all variable in pace, beats, & melody. I do agree that Emancipation Suite was extremely similar to 'Babylon' from the Episode album. Yet, I hated... err... very much disliked, Babylon, but enjoyed this one a little, was probably the weakest song on the album and could have used a joining with Pt 2 instead of split into 2 tracks, but meh..
Blind is another great track as it starts of reminding you a tiny tad of Black Diamond, yet it's different, then gives you that rush into speed like Destiny did at 1min:38secs lol. Falling Star rounds out my Top 3.
Bottom Line:
BUY IT |
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