Under Flaming Winter Skies - Live in Tampere

Under Flaming Winter Skies - Live in Tampere is the last release featuring Stratovarius drummer Jörg Michael, who left the band after sixteen years. Aside of these particular circumstances, the set list of the show is also quite unique. It features three instrumental solos as well as Deep Purple and The Who covers along with Stratovarius songs with a focus on the commercially and creatively successful middle years and the last two records released after the nasty split with Timo Tolkki.

On the positive side, the set list is diversified and comes around with a few surprises as mentioned above. The live atmosphere is great and shines through even though a few announcements were cut. The band is in good form and very playful with interesting transitions and slightly altered codas.

On the negative side, I think that the three rather less impressive instrumentals and the two unnecessary cover songs could have been replaced by three or four rarely played Stratovarius tracks, especially from the overlooked early years. To be honest, Limp Bizkit's cover of ''Behind Blue Eyes'' was more exciting than Stratovarius' fairy ballad approach. Maybe drummer Jörg Michael was particularly excited in the circumstances which makes sense but he finishes almost every song with unnecessary fills and short solos which gets somewhat annoying after a while. He should have played one extended solo and stuck to a more accurate performance otherwise.

In the end, Stratovarius' Under Flaming Winter Skies - Live in Tampere is a quite unique live record due to its unusual set list, playful performance and being the final show with the drummer. On the other side, the show should have been more concise and tight to convince from start to finish. Bottom line is that only faithful fans of the band should pick this release up. Occasional fans don't really need any Stratovarius live record because the band isn't stronger in concert than on its albums. Newcomers to the band should go for the blandly titled but amazingly compiled Best Of package released four years after this output.