Ex-STRATOVARIUS guitarist Timo Tolkki has issued the following statement with regards to his former band's current activities, once again re-igniting their on-again / off-again feud:

"These guys keep on both exploiting the name and pissing on my music and art. More than personal choice it comes down to morals that Stratovarius was completely my vision. Both musically and ideologically. As there cannot be Stratovarius without Kotipelto, Jörg Michael or Jens Johansson, there surely cannot be Stratovarius without me. They are not even leaving in peace some of the most deepest feelings I have composed, like 'Forever', which I composed to my dead father. I am not convinced about the 'sincerity' that 'more music is better.' It is the money talking here. Plus that everything is dumped to my neck blatantly ignoring that I shared every single euro with these guys while I was in the band. We are talking about lot of money here.

I take my music and art very seriously and I don't make compromises. I don't take my music to 'choir wars' and prostitute myself with cheap acts like that. And I take my responsibility when I have done something wrong, like in the (publicity) stunt (in 2004, involving a "new" female singer and an orchestrated "stabbing"). I don't hide. What there guys are doing in this moment by calling their band 'Stratovarius' is disgusting. Truly disgusting."

As previously reported, BW&BK; recently caught up with STRATOVARIUS frontman Timo Kotipelto to discuss the band's new album, Polaris, their first without guitarist / songwriter Timo Tolkki. An excerpt from the story is available below.

“It feels pretty good,” Kotipelto says of fibnally getting Polaris out to the fans, “especially because a year ago we didn’t have a band. We didn’t have a guitarist, we didn’t have any songs, we didn’t have a future, and I think it was only around that we time we started talking about getting a new guitarist. I was talking to Jens (Johansson / keyboards) about it a while ago and I told him it’s a miracle that we were able to make this album.”

With that in mind, was it clear from the beginning that the Stratovarius name was going to be attached to the new music once it was ready for release?

“No, definitely not,” Kotipelto admits. “We were thinking about it, but it all began for real last June (2008) when Matias, Jens, Lauri and me went to a cottage in my hometown and started composing some music and recording demos based on our ideas. We sent the demos to Joerg (Michael/drums) and he came to Finland in the middle of August. We rehearsed for three weeks and it was at that point we decided the music sounded like Stratovarius and that we should use the name. If the music would have been different, in my opinion it wouldn’t have made any sense to use the Stratovarius name, but I think this album sounds like the good old times. It sounds like all the things about Stratovarius that I like. If we had called ourselves something else there always would have been this ‘ex-Stratovarius’ label following us around, so it would have been pointless to rename the band.”

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