The Chosen Ones

Compilations usually show the best songs of an artist, but unfortunatly this album doesn’t seem to satisfy all the fans, in fact, plenty of them commented that the album does not reflect the best songs of the band. Most of the criticism goes round that topic and even I would have added the songs “Stratosphere” and “Tomorrow”, but still I bought the album and I’m not disappointed at all.

There’s two main reasons for me to like this compilation:
1) The three best songs of Stratovarius were included and if they are not the best ones they are at least the most representative ones. I’m talking about “Black Diamond”, “Speed of Light” and “Will the Sun Rise?”.
2) The album gives you the opportunity to discover the sound that Stratovarius had before Kotipelto even joined the band.

With this said I will go straight to the sound, this is defiantly not extreme metal, is actually quite melodic but powerful at the same time, usually labeled as Euro Power Metal with classical orientated keyboards. Through the album you will listen Kotipelto’s high toned singing (one of the highest ones of the power metal bands), Timo Tolkki has very fast guitar solos and riffs, which can be well shown in the song “Speed of Light” and the drumming is quite powerful too with plenty of double bass. I mentioned that the band was melodic and that the first thing you will notice, the first song starts with a classical orientated keyboard figure and it actually sounds like a classical piano which then is reached by the other instruments.

Also I should mention that this album also contains one of the best songs of the early era of the band “Out of the shadows”, and also an interesting acoustic ballad called “Forever”.