This is a short little review over something that not many other review sites have. I figured "Hey why not review something hard to find and obscure just for kicks" and this single/EP came to mind.

Stratovarius' Black Diamond single (I consider it an EP its over 30 min long) is a nice little package, it contains two tracks off of Visions, a demo version of Kiss of Judas, and two live tracks. The first two songs are of course Black Diamond and Kiss of Judas which are two of Stratovarius' most well known songs. The demo version of Kiss of Judas is not very different musically but the lyrics are drastically different. I think this should have been at the end of the EP though as having two versions of the same song in a row is a bit of overkill to me. The two live tracks are We Hold the Key and 4th Reich two vastly underrated songs and are executed flawlessly live. I particularly enjoyed 4th Reich with Kotipelto on vocals he really adds to the overall song. We Hold the Key is an early Stratovarius epic from Fourth Dimension and Im glad its on here.

Well thats it on the songs. Production like always is excellent and with 30+ min of music this is a worthwhile investment if you run across it in a store somewhere. Dont pay too much though as in my case with most singles I listened to it a few times then never again till recently when I dug it out to review it. There aren't any unreleased studio tracks on here which is a drawback, I gladly pay big bucks for unreleased tracks but dont like spending to much on live only b-sides. Yea so this is a worthy single to purchase but not something to sell your firstborn kid to get.