Revolution Renaissance (I know) - Last Night on Earth

[davidn]

To take a phrase from Spinal Tap seeing as it resembles most of their career for the last eight years, Stratovarius really are a bunch of poncey hairdressers. Since their two-part "Elements" album divided the band in that everyone except Timo Tolkki thought (quite rightly) that everything on it was slow, repetitive and dull, they split up, reformed with a different singer, split up again, reformed back together with the lineup from before that, lost a bassist, found a bassist, released The Worst Album In The World (AKA "Stratovarius"), were dormant for about three years, and then split up entirely - all while going through so much pointless public Internet drama over the band's forums, main site and their own individual Myspace pages that I'm genuinely surprised that there isn't an entry for them in Encyclopedia Dramatica to link to at this point.

Except the band seems to have T-1000-like properties in that every time it's smashed to pieces they eventually crawl their way back together again, and it now seems that Stratovarius might limp on yet. Rather than ending completely, the three members of the band who still manage to get on reasonably well together asked Tolkki if they could have the rights to the name and the back catalogue, and after much deliberation that he goes on about in coma-inducing length in the latest of many open letters, he eventually decided to agree just to somehow make the point that he was the better person, while dropping hints about comparing himself to John Lennon and Beethoven. And they've just put a cheery "Thank you" message up in response to all that self-indulgence. So there may still be a few releases yet, although I'm rather afraid that they'll consist mostly of Kotipelto's rubbish songs that Tolkki wouldn't allow him to use when he was in the band.

To be fair to Timo Tolkki, washing his hands of the whole disaster is probably the best thing to do. He put out a statement that he was instead spending his time disappearing further up his considerably-proportioned rear end by writing a metal opera instead - except he's further announced that he is going to come back, but only for one album this time, absolutely certainly. I'm sure that even the average FA user can see that this is getting stupid.

Anyway. With all of that going on, Tolkki also had some material that was intended for Stratovarius before the third time they split up for good, and he's got together a band of musicians that still agree to work with him for some reason (notably Michael Kiske and Tobias Sammet) under the hyper-pretentious name "Revolution Renaissance" to release it. And though I'm really quite surprised to be saying this, it actually seems to be quite decent. If this is anything to go by, anyway.

Artist: Revolution Renaissance
Album: New Era
Song: Last Night on Earth
Visuals: Pretentious album cover with several random effects on it for some reason
The melody is far more... melodic than anything Stratovarius did post-Infinite, and unlike anything from that era it seems to actually have some life to it. There are a couple of Heavenly-like twists to the English language as we speak and understand it to get the lyrics to fit, most obvious on the pronounciation of the word "Utopia" on the chorus ("inventive" is just about the politest way I can put it), but Kotipelto used to do that to a greater or lesser extent all the time anyway.

But the thing that really leaps out at me is that we all know that Michael Kiske doesn't really like a whole lot of noise, and to be honest, it shows a bit here. You get the feeling that he's holding back, and that the chorus should have been much more massive and epic somehow. They should get Piet Sielck on board for that - he'd sort them out.

Comments

[kaedeko.livejournal.com]

I actually kind-of like this song. It feels campy at first, with the odd pronounciations and the bad timing with the words near the beginning of the song, initially making it feel like something an amateur made at home on his weekly allowance.

The thing is, because of the melodic nature of the song, and the rather decent choice of vocals in the chorus (no matter how oddly pronounced), it grows on you the more you listen to it, to the point where it becomes one of your favorite songs simply because it was so bad that it was good.

As odd as it may seem, I also appreciate that the heavens themselves didn't open up and unleash singing angles upon the world during the chorus, while someone played the guitar so hard their fingers burned clean off.

While it is usually my prefered style to have epic... epicness to a song, I'll have to admit that I hear too much of it these days and the fact that it was absent here (and as you said, even giving off that "holding back" vibe) was an subtle, but pleasant surprise.

[davidn]

Interesting that you mention you appreciate that there is some reservation there. I think that most people's image of power metal is that it's full of ludicrous bombast at every opportunity (I think Angra's "Spread Your Fire" pretty much demonstrates the mood you talked about), which is really why I like it :) And while you do need to tone it down sometimes to prevent the whole thing flattening out, I suppose I want Kiske just to sound a bit happier about the whole thing.

[kjorteo]

I spent about the first 1:40 of that song wondering "Is that Michael Kiske? It sort of sounds like Michael Kiske. Maybe not, because Michael Kiske is more obvious, I mean, I would know if that were Michael Kiske. This really sounds like Michael Kiske, though, but...wait, no. No? Yes... Maybe?" It was only the line "Yes the answer lies in questions that are simple but so true" that finally decisively gave him away.

See, I'm used to the kind of high shouting notes he hits in I Want Out and Shelter From the Rain, not the jarringly more normal reserved voice he had in Windmill.

Anyway, that song struck me as something like cotton candy: pleasant, and consuming it gives you something to do for about four minutes, but not even remotely fulfilling and leaving you just as hungry as when you started. It's the kind of thing that would contribute to the overall impression of me liking the entire album (assuming anything else on it is stronger, anyway,) but it'd take me about eight more listens of said album before I remembered this song in particular. Maybe I'm just too used to having my world rocked, but yes, I agree that moving the sliding scale a little more toward the Iron Savior end could sort out this whole mess.

[davidn]

The feeling of something missing is probably compounded by the way that as we know, Tolkki doesn't even like doing songs with any sense of... pace, or any sort of life to them. So I imagine this was only grudgingly put together as he realized that nobody else really liked his recent music and had to backtrack. Eagleheart from Elements Part 1 is clearly the best on the album - it's obscenely happy but powerful and catchy, and he makes sure to mention how much he regrets writing it at every opportunity.

So that's two people in the band already who wouldn't seem to really want to be there. It's surely one of the most embarrassing collapse from a band that used to be great and as an entity is slightly older than me - the Sonic Team of power metal.