Survive

After like seven years gone, I wasn’t sure we’d hear from Stratovarius again – they had four albums in quick succession with new guitar maestro Matias Kupiainen and then nothing from 2015 until a few months ago.

At this point they have their sound down to a science, and I mean that in a good way – this is music that’s practically mechanical in precision. The band leans into that pretty hard. The production sounds like something cut from futuristic machinery, and the band plays hard, cold modern stuff, tying it back to power metal only with Koltipelto’s sonorous vocals and some speedy throwbacks here and there. I’ve found other such bands doing this kind of stuff to lack a certain soul. But Stratovarius has honed their writing and presentation, and they attack this stuff with a verve and rock and roll attitude that just grabs you and forces you to pay attention. There's a kind of gravitas and weight to all of it that not every band can manage, and it just comes down to the band really going at you with heaviness and conviction.

There aren’t as many surprises now, but that’s par for the course with a band that’s technically been going since the 80s – though with no original members. The guitars crunch and roll at you like a tank, the drums are hard hitting, the keys are a cool misty rain over some future-city. Some of the songs like “Broken” and the title track aren’t concerned with sounding as much like power metal, with mechanical, downtuned riffs and twists and turns behind the layered choruses.

Koltipelto doesn’t sound like he’s 25 anymore, but his ear for instantly memorable vocal melodies is intact – tracks like “Demand,” “Glory Days,” “Frozen in Time” and album standout “We Are Not Alone” are on point. The band does a great job here of making songs that sound like you’ve always known them. They have a genuine identity to them and the songwriting is just at that sweet spot where they have their own niche. It’s good stuff. Even the 11-minute “Voice of Thunder” works, with a commanding chorus and crunching riffs.

There’s always a kind of fussiness to these bands, and I’m not always in the mood for this level of polish. But for power metal, Stratovarius delivers the goods. It’s music that is powerful and catchy and it knows exactly what it wants to be. Hard to fault that.