REVOLUTION RENAISSANCE mastermind Timo Tolkki (ex-STRATOVARIUS) has posted his "final announcement regarding Stratovarius. It is long, but it explains everything and is worth to read. After this statement I will not comment the whole thing anymore, but I will concentrate on the future of my new band."

Tolkki's statement reads as follows:

"I am writing this in Canton, a small city in China after a week from the statement the ex-members of Stratovarius published. Yesterday an earthquake killed over 50 000 people 1500 kilometres from here. That actually put things into perspective for me regarding the recent events. My mind has calmed down and I am able to think more rationally about the whole situation. I am going to take you on a small journey to some key events that hopefully are enough to make you understand what kind of things have been going on. I simply cannot just be silent after that slanderous attack towards me and my music that the other guys launched some time ago. However after this, I will continue my life and leave this behind.

My memories go back to the year 1984 when I received that phone call to join Stratovarius when the guitar player/ main songwriter had been fired, and when we started building up the band from scratch. I started singing and composing songs that were totally different from those Ozzy-influenced blues songs the band had been playing for 2 years. We worked hard, played every day, made demos and finally we made our dream came true: we got a record deal with CBS. Fright Night, Twilight Time and Dreamspace followed each others. It took over 8 years before any of us saw any money from the record sales.

At this point Stratovarius had become my band, I was the ”Kapellmeister” and the band was my symphony orchestra. Together we made some truly memorable music. At this point I worked alone full time as a manager and a booking agent for the band. With this enormous amount of work, the foundation was laid for the later success of Stratovarius. I was never paid for this work and not then and not after that have I ever considered money to be the reason why I am a musician.

The much-criticized firing of Tuomo Lassila and Antti Ikonen were simply due to a non-dedication to the band’s activities. They both were not at all into heavy metal and I don’t think they ever thought that the band could become so successful. They didn’t like the direction the music was heading. It was another painful decision that I as a leader of the band had to do. And it was for the better. They could continue to do what they did best. Today Tuomo Lassila is a respected Classical percussionist in a Symphony Orchestra. Still I am looking at that time with a certain nostalgia, with a certain ”innocence”. There were no big corporate deals or managers breathing down my neck to ”make that hit record fast”. We played to very small audiences, sometimes to seven people, but it didn't matter, it was fun. There was not much money involved, but more than that, there was fun and there was creativity. And there was friendship too.

When Timo Kotipelto, Jens Johansson and Jörg Michael joined the band, I knew I had found the line up, that would take us as far as you can go with this kind of music. The only thing I was concerned was, that I was the only guy in the band that had a spiritual approach to life and that I had been writing songs about Love, Peace, Universal Brotherhood since I was a teenager . But I did not give it so much thought, since I thought that I would be able to express that message anyway, because it is a strong one. It culminates in the symbol of Fleur De Lys, which means and represents to me the spirituality and all those core human values I have always been writing about. At that time I did not understand, that like many of those who had been walking this path, that I would face a lot of violent hatred and laughter. Now I know better, but today that only makes my message stronger. You have to learn to look at the evil eye to eye and laugh at it. I found that symbol 1992 and put it on the cover of my first solo album and later on the Stratovarius logo 5 years later. And now it follows me to my new band Revolution Renaissance."

Read more here.