Stratovarius - Visions

Tracks:

The Kiss Of Judas
Black Diamond
Forever Free
Before The Winter
Legions
The Abyss Of Your Eyes
Holy Light
Paradise
Coming Home
Visions (Southern Cross)

Total Playing Time : 61:01

Year: 1997
Label: Modern Music Records
Producer: Timo Tolkki

I've been aware of Stratovarius for some time, but to be honest I was always of the opinion that I wouldn't like them. I was in my local record store a few weeks ago, having a browse when I spied this. I was actually looking for something else, but as is usually the case, none of the record stores here in Belfast had any if the albums I was after. I'd love to be able to just walk into a record store, pick up the album I want and buy it just like all those Spice Girls and Oasis fans. Sadly, practically every album I buy is through mail order, which means an agonising wait for the package to drop through my letterbox. Anyway, that day in the record store I just had to buy something and came away with Stratovarius.

I'd describe Stratovarius as mixture of the techno metal of bands like Queensryche and Conception and the neo-classical approach of Malmsteen. Mr Malmsteen hasn't made it into my collection yet. Queensryche's Empire must rate as one of my most disappointing purchases to date. I just can't see where all the rave reviews came from. The Conception album I have has some nice Al Di Meola style guitar passages, but doesn't visit my CD player that often. So buying this was a bit of an experiment on my part.

Kiss Of Judas is a strong opener. It's a mid-tempo rocker that certainly grabs your attention right from the start.

The vocalist has a voice in the higher reaches of the scale, but that's not surprising for this style of music. There's a hint of accent, but this is so common place these days, that I don't really notice anymore.

Black Diamond is played at breakneck pace. OK, I know that this is part and parcel of this style of music, but I half expect one of the instruments to win the race and finish the song way before the rest of the band. The pace continues unabated on Forever Free.

Before the Winter slows it down to power ballad pace and features some interesting keyboards and plucked string effects.

They crank things up again to 'faster than light' pace on Legions. This is the best fast 'n' furious effort so far.

The Abyss Of Your Eyes (don't ya just love that title) has the band adopting a more sensible pace. It's a combination of the instrumentation plus the lyrics, but when the singer sings the line about catching his breath, I always expect him to finish it off with the line 'with confidence and self-control' which is from a song by my favourite prog rockers Dream Theater.

Holy Light is an instrumental which features no surprises and is a romp through all the styles and tempos featured on the rest of the album.

This is followed by the excellent Paradise, which rocks out big time and could give prime time Scorpions a run for their money. My fave tune on the album. This is followed another ballad called Coming Home.

With a band like Stratovarius, you just know that there is going to be an epic track lurking somewhere on the album. Here, the 10 min title tack is saved until last. I enjoy listening to this track, but it has to be said that it is cliché ridden - loud and quiet passages, tempo changes and even a deep voiced spoken section. The voice-overs may well have some of you rolling about laughing. At the end it is almost like a national anthem with layers of vocals/choirs and the majestic sounding music.

I don't know how this compares with previous Stratovarius outings, but most other reviews I've read seem to agree that this is their best effort to date. One review I've read gave this a 10/10 rating. If this is you preferred style of music then I can see where that could come from. I'm going to be more conservative in my rating.

One interesting point is that the album features a video clip of Kiss Of Judas which is compatible with Windows based PCs. I'm almost tempted to give them an extra point for this, because I think it's an excellent way of making use of the extra space on the CD.

Rating: 8