Stratovarius Vocalist Defends Band's New Direction

In a recent interview with BW&BK, Stratovarius vocalist Timo Kotipelto defended the band's decision to tone down their trademark high speed, high-end vocal sound on their forthcoming album, simply titled "Stratovarius."

“To be honest, the feedback is more postive than I expected it to be," says Kotipelto. "We’ve heard only good things about this album. But, I’m prepared for people not to like it because it’s different. It was a good thing for me especially that Timo (Tolkki/guitars) composed these songs, because if he would have suggested in December doing songs that were the same shit like on Elements Part 1 and 2 I would have told him ‘Fuck you, I don’t need this.’ I wanted to do something different.”

"Some fans are going to be pissed off, sure,” he concedes, “but we’ve done this power epic whatever-you-want-to-call-it metal for 10 albums and we’ve taken it as far as we can. There was no way. The next thing would have been Elements Part 3 with a 1,000 piece orchestra, extremely fast songs and dog-whistle vocals, so what would be the point of that? We’re not 20 year old kids anymore, so we don’t have to prove anything.”

The new album comes in the wake of a year long feud between Kotipelto and Tolkki following the singer's dismissal in 2003. Differences were patched up following Tolkki being diagnosed as a manic depressive. Watch for the full story in BW&BK #91.

Source: BW&BK