Onni : 16/20 | Once again, the recognizable voice of Finnish singer Timo Kotipelto sounds in the player – driving and energetic music from the first note. You may know Kotipelto already by his work in Stratovarius and a couple of solo albums. Here we have his third solo album, Serenity, released in 2007, where Timo has gathered a solid line-up : keyboardist Janne Wirman (Children Of Bodom), bassist Lauri Porra (Stratovarius), guitarist Tuomas Wainölä (Thunderstone) and drummer Mirka Rantanen (Thunderstone). The booklet is in warm brown colours (but maybe a bit too dark) and contains a few nice photos and lyrics - nothing special, after all. But let's listen to the content…
You always can hear and recognize a good musician, professional in his work. Of course that's true of Kotipelto and the other guys who play on Serenity. Everything's done pretty well : arrangements, recording, and all of the production, photos, and artwork. But have you ever tried to count all the good musicians and professionals in rock music ? Do you know how many good and pretty nice CDs are in the world ? I don't. And it's useless to count; we can for sure tell : damned a lot. We buy them and listen a few times, and then we put them on a shelf and we don't know when we'd take them out again. Because they lack something.
So Serenity seems to have it all. The album starts with the power metal classic "Once Upon A Time" and continues with "Sleep Well" in a different vein : it's driving and rhythmic, yet a melodic, mid-tempo effort, which can be a hit in concert. Continuing in the same style are "Serenity" and "City of Mysteries", with different keyboard sounds but with nice chorus melodies and guitar riffs (and with the classic structure where you'll find verse, bridge, chorus, solo …). "Angels Will Cry" and "Mr. Know-It-All" return to power metal, fast and with more high-pitched moments in the vocal lines. Of course Kotipelto has a ballad, the lyrical version of "After the Rain"; you can find its acoustic version on some releases as a bonus track. The final track, "Dreams and Reality", stands out a bit out among all the album's songs : it's more epic, more melodic, although as a whole belongs to the mid-tempo part of CD.
Applause ! We can just be delighted with such work. But I am sure that after a few days we will… put this effort on a shelf and forget it. Because it's the same as many others, and after all, the melodies are not so catchy. There's nothing outstanding, no moment in which you'd stop and forget everything, sunk in the music. No, this music is not so deep, sincere, and sensitive. Maybe Kotipelto is a great vocalist, but obviously he is not a great composer…
Summary ? This album is good stuff for those who like such a genre, but it's not the highlight of the year.
2009-01-20
|
|
