Metal Reviews

In case someone is interested what he's up to this time.

http://www.symfonia.fi/

Andre Matos - Vocals
Timo Tolkki - Guitar
Jari Kainulainen - Bass
Uli Kusch - Drums
Mikko Härkin - Keyboards

This should be worth listening. Looking forward to this.

It sounds good, but I think Timo is really squandering his talents not producing records full time.

Thank you Timo for working on one of my favorite albums ever: The Perfect Machine!

Why do people work with this guy? He's so obviously insane.

That's a pretty impressive lineup. Got some legends in power metal there. Now if Timo can just keep his manic depression locked up this could be really good.

His production work on that Vision Divine album is one of the finest ever. He didn't have anything to do with the vocal recordings, but that is always left best to the vocalist themselves if they are using their own studio, which is the case here. Timo is a better producer that 99% of the "legends" out there. I can really only think of two people that sonically and arrangement wise have surpassed him and that is Peter Collins and Tom Scholz and Scholz doesn't really count because that was his band and his own hand built studio and doesn't do outside projects to my knowledge.

Timo is my first choice as a producer i'd hire. If I couldn't get him in the studio to co-produce (he can have all the damn royalties and i'll go uncredited) I wouldn't even bother hiring a producer because anyone else I have in mind is going to want a half million dollar budget and probably 10-20k dollars as a fee and want to manage the money themselves. I'm not that stupid. I can steal from myself without fake receipts easier.

I'd settle for Joe Lynn Turner though as a very close second.

Why work with Timo? He is brilliant, and i really haven't listened to more than a half dozen Strato songs. I need to correct that.

I don't see this band lasting. I hope they write some good music, but I know egos will clash and Tolkki will go insane... again.

This will suck. How many times will tolki rewrite the song black diamond? Thats all this will be, especially considering the other musicians. Matos is just getting worse and worse.

Is there a studio big enough to fit all those ego's in....Cant see it going past one studio album ....

Samples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=advfA-Ic ... re=related

He should've just called this Stratovarius 2....

These definitely aren't Matos' glory days. This sounds good though.

It's a classic problem. He either has nodules he refuses to address or is being lazy.

Geoff Tate claims he has to spend a month doing 3 hour a day sets to get his voice in shape to tour.

I've got news for everyone. Singing with no difficulty is fucking boring. Eventually you stop surprising yourself with what you can pull off and just get lazy.

Everything becomes a tedious chore eventually, if you do it well enough.

lol

Symfonia - In Paradisum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfpfsp-tX6s

My last attempt at listening to Timmo was Saana Warrior of Light, which was a whole lot of nothing, so Im hesitant to give him another shot.

You should do it. The above song is very, very good.

Couldn't agree with you more. One thing that bothers me is how Andre sings. Hardly no vibrato, kinda sticks out. But nevertheless, great song.

I didn't like it at all actually. Matos sounds horrible, the keyboard solo was kind of randomly inserted in the middle, the chorus is boring, and its too long. I'm all for long songs, but this one just seems poorly done.

Honestly, after listening to those samples, it sounds like older Edguy. He sounds like Tobias so much that its a bit weird, and not in a good way. Dont think this one is for me. I agree with metalNESS on this one.

RIght on the mark. Hmmm, maybe I'm rubbing off on you.

I have a promo of In Paradisum and I'm listening to it now. It sounds EXACTLY like Stratovarius. Ridiculously so. But it's still good.