Stephen
I'm not expecting Stratovarius to survive and continue the saga after the departure of their key member, Timo Tolkki, but Kotipelto and the team decided that life must goes on, and to give the fans what they want, here comes "Polaris", their 12th studio album to date and the first one without Tolkki. If you wonder how good is this with the absence of the mastermind that wrote like 95% of their songs, then I tell you that it's far from such thing called excellent or great. In my opinion, "Polaris" had lost the soul of classic Stratovarius and the band decided to follow Edguy's path by implementing a diverse sound ranging from power metal, hard rock, heavy metal, and ballads. I'm not saying that it's a bad idea, but clearly, the lack of good and consistent songwriting is the low point of this album.
Couple of best tracks that worth the whole album alone for hardcore are "Blind", a neoclassical piece with astute interlude, emerged as the greatest song of the album. "Forever Is Today" copied the same pattern and extremely enjoyable for fans of classic power metal. "Higher We Go" tuned down the tempo a bit, an example of good combination of hard rock verse and melodic metal chorus. The soothing acoustical closer, "When Mountains Fall", is somewhat friendly to my ear and it doesn't sound like Stratovarius, but I still like it.
"Winter Skies" is a decent piano-driven ballad, but "Somehow Precious" is just dull and forgettable, not to mention that three ballads in a power metal album is not a genius idea. "Falling Star" is an average hard rock, and "Deep Unknown" is a decent heavy metal slab with a nice dreamy keys intro. Two parts of "Emancipation Suite" altogether with "King of Nothing" are absolutely the worst part of the album.
I guess "Polaris" is meant only for diehards and isn't really recommended for casual power metal fans, but if you still enjoy Edguy's latest release, probably would be easier for you to accept this, although judging from the songwriting department, I still think Edguy is superior. Since I'm not expecting Tolkki to return to Stratovarius in sometimes soon, I highly doubt their next release will spark my interest.