{mosimage}After leaving Stratovarius, Timo Tolkki, the Finnish magician with the guitar, is back with his new project and the second studio album.
A second studio album that could perfectly be catalogued as debut one, since the previous one was made up with the material that should have gone originally for Stratovarius. With people like Gus Monsanto on the vocals or Bruno Agra as drummer, Tolkki seems to have formed a more stable project. At least, the band sounds like a band, not just Tolkki trying to impose his guitar solos over the rest of the instruments, and the final result is quite a good work of heavy metal. Let´s see if the formation remains in the future, because there are rumours that Tolkki will count with some old members of Stratovarius for the following full length.
If it would be any other band, many people would catalogue this as an excellent heavy metal album. But being Tolkki´s new project, it will be loved and hated equally. The album does not provide with any special surprise, actually, almost “surprisingly”, it sounds too much “Stratovarius” in songs like Sins of my beloved or the beautiful ballad Ghost of fallen grace. But in general, all the tracks are pretty enjoyable, especially the flamboyant Ixion´s Wheel or the final folk-metal oriented Into the future.
Tolkki shows that he still keeps the magic in his fingers, let´s see if his head can also work so fine in the future! For those of you who loved the first albums of Stratovarius and want to listen to more of the same, you are going to enjoy this. For the ones that wanted a more experimental or surprising album, better go somewhere else.
Rating 3/5.