Timo Tolkki - Hymn To Life

*=Staff's pick	Primal Key to the Universe Now I Understand* Divine Little Boy I Miss you I Believe Are You the One? Father Fresh Blue Waters Dear God It's Xmas Morning Hymn to Life

Genre	Heavy Metal	Timo Tolkki	Vocals
Tracks	12	Timo Tolkki	Guitar
Runningtime	61 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Nuclear Blast	-	Bass
Release	25 Feb. 2002	Anssi Nykänen	Drums
Country	Finland	Mika Ervaskari	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

During the rest Stratovarius are having to recharge their batteries (which if you ask me was very necessary at the end), guitarvirtous Timo Tolkki takes the oppurtunity to release a soloalbum.
The problem is that when there is an album released under the name "Timo Tolkki" you expect guitarplaying out of the ordinary - here you get practically none.

I guess that for Timo there are pretty much 2 choices when doing such a thing: either he takes the style of Stratovarius even further in heaviness, depth, speed and melodies - or he seeks completely new ways, styles and approaches.
He has done the latter - and as much as he possibly could have.

Apperantly this album is supposed to be a very personal journey through Tolkki's life expressed through his music, and he spent many months in a small studio/house by the sea in Finland recording this. The ones that have or have heard his first soloalbum Classical Variations and Themes that came back in 1994 - which was a nice one where he showed off his talent, and are expecting a natural follow-up on that one is going to be vastly disappointed.

This is very laidback music - I am even hesitating to place it under the category metal. Very slow, melancholic songs in the midtempo ballad style.
We get a few heavy riffs delivered during the album, but they can easily be counted on one hand's fingers. We get a lot of melancholic pianoparts and ballads here, and as a reviewer of metalalbums I must say that this is nothing to recommend.

This doesn't really make any sense or have some sort of value to me, and I have a hard time seeing that metalfans as well as people more into the soft sides would like this. Today's guitarpopbands make album way more interesting than this - both when it comes to melodies and grooves.

Reading that Hymn to Life has been chosen as the Album of the Month in many magazines worldwide makes me wonder on what criterias they are basing such declarations on, cause in my eyes this album basically doesn't fit anywhere.

There are one nice song on this, though - the catchy Now I Understand, but the rest is basically very dull, under average songs that neither fail nor stands out, and he also proves that he are able to produce really horrible songs.
Father is among the worst compositions I have heard in a long while - it's not even good as a normal song.

This may, as we have been told, very well be a very personal and important project for Timo, but it doesn't carry the slightest bit of commercial value, and neither does it have much musical value.

This doesn't do much for us fans of your guitarplaying, Timo.
I feel that this will go into the shelf, and not fill any other purpose than collecting dust.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
8,5	6,5	2

Summary
1 chalices of 10 - Tommy