Stratovarius
Polaris

Despite being allergic to power "metal" like a vampire to garlic, I decided to listen to this new album by Stratovarius driven by an irrepressible curiosity towards a band that billions of years ago, when I still had to discover serious Metal, fascinated me quite a bit. As you can see from the score, this is the first time I write a scathing review because, generally, I prefer to dedicate time (and reviews) to the bands I love and not to those that make me sick, but as I previously appreciated this band, I couldn't resist the temptation to listen to their new work.

After the terrible "Elements I" and "II", the even more disappointing "Stratovarius", and the departure of the founder and mastermind Timo Tolkki, the reins of the band were definitively taken over by singer Timo Kotipelto and drummer Jorg Michael. The replacement for Tolkki, Matias Kupiainen, does nothing to make the listener realize that Stratovarius has changed guitarists, as beyond a totally anonymous shredding entirely Malmsteenian, ours seems to know nothing more than imitating his corpulent predecessor, but as we know, power "metal" is like that, fantasy and innovation do not certainly reign supreme.

It starts with "Deep Unknown" and after a few seconds, boredom rises like a tide, always the same riffs, always the same vocal lines, always the same keyboard passages, and the usual drums following everything without any flair or imagination, if we add that this track is also the first single, we can say that the album doesn't introduce itself in the best way. The rest is absolutely no better, with faster tracks like "Falling Star", "Blind" (no, it’s not a Korn cover, we were only missing that), "Forever Is Today", and slower, more atmospheric tracks like "King Of Nothing", "Somehow Precious", or the concluding "When Mountains Fall". Noteworthy is "Emancipation", a piece divided into two parts (calling it a suite would be too much) where the first is a self-plagiarism of "The Land of Ice and Snow" from the previous album, while the second part has an arpeggio that even a deaf person would recognize as too similar to that of "The Unforgiven" by Metallica!!!!

In conclusion, let's say that this return is a disaster across the board, zero innovation, less than zero imagination, and the desire to surprise the listener is out of the question.

I hadn't listened to this band for years, and now I can say with absolute certainty that I will never listen to them again.

P.S. The cover is very beautiful, undoubtedly the best thing about this album.