Stratovarius - Elysium

Published February 07 2011

*=Staff's pick	Darkest Hours Under Flaming Skies Infernal Maze Fairness Justified The Game Never Ends Lifetime In A Moment Move The Mountain* Event Horizon Elysium

Genre	Power/Neoclassical Metal	Timo Kotipelto	Vocals
Tracks	9	Matias Kupiainen	Guitar
Runningtime	57 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Eagle Rock Entertainment	Lauri Porra	Bass
Release	14 January 2011	Jörg Michael	Drums
Country	Finland	Jens Johansson	Keyboard
Producer	Matias Kupiainen
Similar artists	---

The Finnish Power Metal-quintet is back with their 13th album. Their last album, Polaris, was a letdown. It was the first album without guitarist and main songwriter Timo Tolkki and the lack of good songwriting was evident.

The first thing that strikes me, when listening to the album, is the weak production and the second thing is the absence of Tolkki. It's hard to record a good album when you lose a songwriter of his skills. Even though lead vocalist, Timo Kotipelto, showed on his solo albums that he has skills as a songwriter, he does not get enough space here.

On this album we get nine songs and I must say that the only song that should have made the cut is the ballad, Move The Mountain, which thanks to Kotipelto's performance is a lovely song. An outside producer would probably have told the band that this is simply not good enough for a Stratovarius album.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
6	4	3	7	3

Summary
3,5 chalices of 10 - Tobbe