Music

When I was on the way back from going to get bus tickets this lunchtime, I decided to go in to the nearby music store. I knew I didn't want to spend money at that moment, so I told myself "I won't get anything unless they've got something really great like Stratovarius's 'Infinite'", safe in the knowledge that nowhere in Aberdeen had anything of interest to me at all. I am now sitting at work listening to "Infinite" by Stratovarius.

Speaking of the band, in a continuation of their unlikely story from the past year, Stratovarius have now un-reunited, but not as severely as last time, and without any "drama or bad blood", which certainly makes a change. This time, only the bass player has left, but it's still the third time in a year that at least one member has left. I think that must be a record. On the positive side of things, they're soon to release a new album with the silly title of "Popkiller", and there's a countdown to the release of the video from "Maniac Dance" on their site.

Oddly, my brother Richard has got very in to music during the past couple of weeks after hating virtually all forms of music for years before (about the same age that it happened to me, in fact). He seems to be getting in to individual songs rather than bands as a whole, but he's taking an MP3 player load from my Music directory to Germany with him next week.

Extra Notes

I have found out that the last track on the American version of Sonata Arctica's "Reckoning Night" is not Wrecking the Sphere at all, but a completely different bonus track simply entitled Jam.

Infinite is pretty good from first impressions, with highlights being A Million Light Years Away, Glory of the World, and the almighty opener Hunting High and Low. They have included some of Stratovarius's trademark awkward pauses in some songs, though on second listen I've concluded that the instrumental from Phoenix isn't quite as horrific as I thought.

I've also noticed the cover art is a lot better than most of Derek Riggs' recent work. While it's in his modern, more computery and clean style, which I'm not usually a fan of, the actual content of it seems as clever as it was back when he used to do cover work for Iron Maiden.