By Carl Begai

Nothing ever goes as planned, but that can be a positive. Case in point with STRATOVARIUS, who had planned to finish out 2010 working on a new record with a release set for February / March 2011. Instead, the band made the surprise move to release a new single in November 2010 featuring new tracks ‘Darkest Hours’ and ‘Infernal Maze’ in anticipation of a European tour supporting German metal veterans HELLOWEEN. At the same time the new album, Elysium, was pushed forward to hit the shelves in January 2011. Frontman Timo Kotipelto welcomes the familiar pre-release chaos, especially now that Stratovarius has an official new lease on life with the all-important second album featuring new guitarist Matias Kupiainen. He admits, however, that the buzz generated so far in advance of the new album is something of a surprise.

“It started last June when we got a call from the Helloween camp asking if we wanted to tour with them. We were planning on putting out the album next year but we nothing definite was confirmed, so when the tour offer came up we had figure something out. The album wasn’t going to be finished before the tour started, so we decided to release the single. The idea for an EP came from the record company, and I think it was a good one. The album itself is being mastered as we speak. It’s done.”

Kotipelto agrees that Stratovarius lucked out hooking up with Edel / earMusic, a label that has made its presence known once again on the metal scene over the last couple years. As with the release of Polaris, Edel has invested serious time and money in promoting the Helloween tour and the ‘Darkest Hours’ single; a rarity in the day and age of record companies being overly cautious about how they invest their finances.

“We’re very happy with the work Edel are doing. You said it yourself; the albums aren’t selling as many copies as they used to, many labels aren’t signing new bands, and if they are the bands aren’t promoted very well. Edel did a lot of work for Polaris and we have a very good relationship with them. We’re happy they’re actually doing this much work for us. It seems there’s going to be five or six months of tour altogether for the new album, which is a lot, but it’s good for us.”

Most fans agree that Polaris was a nice try, but not the full-on old school Stratovarius album everyone was hoping for. Elysium is, therefore, the band’s do or die effort. Asked if he learned anything from the Polaris experience that was applied – or not – to the new album, Kotipelto says it was in fact business as usual to some degree in spit of having a different working environment.

“I’ve done 12 or 13 albums in my life and it’s basically always the same hectic running to meet the deadline. It’s very stressful, so I basically haven’t learned anything (laughs). Working on the new album was different from Polaris, of course, because Matias had just joined the band when we started demoing stuff for the last album. We didn’t have the live experience with this line-up like we do now. The new album isn’t totally different from Polaris, but it is different. I would say the new album is the kind of album that Polaris should have been, but of course that wasn’t possible at the time. Hopefully it doesn’t sound too different from what people expect. The material sounds like the past but it’s presented in a modern day sort of way.”

“Most of the new stuff is actually composed by Matias,” he reveals. “There are two songs from Jens (Johansson / keyboards) and one from me. There’s one long song on the album, which is about 18 minutes divided into three different parts. We were thinking that they should be indexed separately, but it ended up on the album as just one long song.”
“I was pleasantly surprised,” Kotipelto says of Kupiainen. “He’s probably the best guitarist I’ve ever played live with. I don’t know what his problem is but he doesn’t make any mistakes (laughs). When he joined the band we weren’t tight as a group because we hadn’t played live together, but we did over 100 shows for Polaris. Those four or five months made us tighter and Matias is more relaxed because he knows what we’re expecting and what the fans expect.”

The forthcoming album is also an important step towards erasing the tabloid drama of the last several years and the fallout that has dogged the band since they decided to continue without guitarist Timo Tolkki.

“I think the media will take us more seriously again. Some of them thought we were just living off our past with Polaris, thinking we couldn’t compose anything without Tolkki. If you listen to the new album you’ll see that we don’t need him in the band anymore. We respect him as a songwriter but we’ve definitely moved on.”

The focus is on the tour, however, and not what the media hacks think.

“I see the tour as a really good opportunity for us – and for Helloween – to reach more people together. Especially for us because they already had this tour set up; it was very easy for us to just jump in. The fans are very enthusiastic about this idea of having two power metal old time bands out there together. Power metal hasn’t been all that popular over the last few years, but some of the bands that were bigger in the past are still there. I don’t think there’s a lot of selection for fans of this kind of music when it comes to shows, so I think this is going to be a good tour.”

Sadly, word came down a couple weeks before the tour that drummer Jörg Michael had been diagnosed with cancer. A crushing blow for a band on its way back up, but Kotipelto says that Michael wasn’t about to watch Stratovarius come to a grinding halt on his behalf.

“Jörg told us we shouldn’t cancel the tour, that we should to start the tour without him, and he’s planning to join us in January. I believe he’ll beat the cancer. He’s now taking some iodine treatment and can't be on the first leg with us, but I saw him during the weekend and he was very optimistic about his return. The rehearsals with (temporary replacement) Alex Landenburg are going well; he’s a good drummer and a very nice guy. We’ll try to deliver as good shows as possible considering the situation. Jörg's illness came as a total shock to us and it took days to even understand what it’s all about. He’s very happy about all the support he’s gotten from friends and fans. He’s a fighter and won’t give up, and we’re looking forward to his triumphant return.”