STRATOVARIUS — Elysium (review)

STRATOVARIUS — Elysium album cover Album · 2011 · Power Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Stephen
"Elysium" shows the world that Stratovarius' life after Timo Tolkki still goes on and honestly, I'm quite surprised to see an improving quality from the last album where right now, they seem to have found a firm stepping stone to go back in form to revive their glorious era. Evidently, the band is still applying the same variation formula as in "Polaris" which colored the album with many different nuances, from their power metal signature to heavy ballads, from melodic metal to lengthy progressive-wrapped epic. Hats off to the upward momentum of the newly joined member, Matias Kupiainen, young in age but the capability of filling the songwriting shoe of Tolkki is started to bloom. Together with Kotipelto, both of them basically wrote the great parts of "Elysium".

"Darkest Hours" started the race with a bloodpumping heavy metal rhythm that eventually soared high with a splendid chorus. A great track to begin as the emotion is stirred smoothly before they blasted with a real power metal treat in "Under Flaming Skies". The darkened riffs in a typical Euro power metal stance brought back the classic style and sounded very fresh at the same time. "The Game Never Ends" isn't different, the incinerating riffage slipped with a tense interlude is just stunning. "Infernal Maze" is their second single, good attempt but shame that it's out of the league compared to the other great tracks. Unfortunately, the great moments were ruined by several fillers such as "Fairness Justified", "Move The Mountain", and the worst track, "LIfetime In A Moment". Come to think of it, the bad part of this album is the slower tempo songs. If only they put those aside and bravely charged forward with uptempo power metal in the veins of "Dreamspace" or "Episode" era, this album could have been way bigger than this. Check out the deadly duel of Kupiainen / Johansson at "Event Horizon", like a thunderbolt, it struck down from the sky and wreck everything in sight, a magnificent combo.

I should say, let's just consider "Polaris" a teaser to the real rebirth of Finland's power metal giant, Stratovarius, in "Elysium". The number thirteen apparently isn't a bad omen for them, instead this 13th release is a convincing effort to push the train back to the rail. However, I still see quite a large room to improve in the songwriting section. Based on the weak tracks I've seen, it might be good for Johansson and Porra to fall back and let Kotipelto and Kupiainen focuses on arranging songs. To sum up, this is better than the previous, but still climbing slowly to reach the peak again.
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