That was my first thought when I started listening to "Maniac Dance", with its stiff electronic noodlings. Hey, I like electronics, but I like them done well. And it wasn't the Stratovarius I was used to.
Then come the lyrics - "This year has been a nightmare, I've been so low, I don't care/I've dwelled in depths of darkness, swam across the ocean of pain/I've fed the tabloids, the media, it's a bottomless pit, a redia/Front pages, gossips, knifings, drunken nights and days.", and I now know the band was going through much inner turmoil at the time of this album's release. Timo Tolkki had had a nervous breakdown and been diagnosed with bi-polar, followed by him being stabbed at a concert, although this was supposed to be a hoax, which makes the lyrics all the worse. Also a hoax was Timo Kotipelto being fired briefly from the band, and replaced by some girl called Katrina K.
So from all this we have a half-hearted, plodding and fatally misguided record, with little of Jens Johansson's symphonic sound, no real speed, and mostly ordinary melodies. There are moments that give a bit of hope, like with "Leave The Tribe" (although, since the song comes near the end, hope is pretty much gone by then), and "Götterdämmerung (Zenith of Power)" laments Hitler - but even that sounds strained. And Kotipelto does very poorly at trying to fit the lyrics into the music. That has been a problem in the past, and I don't think I've mentioned it, because the good has outweighed such a problem. But not in this case.
Speaking of strained, the concluding "United" takes pretention to its extreme - "United we stand, divided we fall, the sun is shining for each and for all/The future is bright and there's hope in the air, together we're singing, together we care."
Of course, united is something they were not. Bassist Jari Kainulainen was fired soon after this, and such was the resulting division that Tolkki eventually disbanded Stratovarius altogether.
But that didn't last. The band eventually returned, without Tolkki and Kainulainen, and released POLARIS in 2009.
What a sad state of affairs for such a fine, dignified band. And what a sad album this is for Tolkki's eventual departure.
**
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