Leer Revolution Renaissance: ¡Primicia! Nuevo Cantante y Gira Suramericana en El blog de AJHI

Tolkki's main motivation was greed



Timo Tolkki published a statement» on on April 2 this year. The other members of Stratovarius would now like to set the record straight. You can't argue with someone's perception of things, you can just explain how you see things differently.



The confrontations, fights, incompetence, tensions, negativity, bitterness, hostility, disinterest, bad musicianship, and unfriendliness that Timo described were never there. He constructed this alternate reality around these simple and for him painful facts:



1) The band's momentum has been slowing since 2004.



2) The media chaos of 2004 made him lose a lot of trust and respect both within and outside the band.



3) Stratovarius' label Sanctuary had severe financial problems from 2005 on. It forced us to start a legal process at the beginning of 2007.



If you live your life through other people's eyes, declining sales or a perceived loss of power are matters of deep, stinging personal humiliation.



Other sad facts remain. The legal fight left us without a way to make a new album, and financially strapped. Timo's main motivation for what he did was greed, not issues of friendship or art.



In the summer of 2007, he presented the Stratovarius/ Revolution Renaissance demos we had all financed and recorded to Frontiers Records, and signed a recording agreement for a solo project. Unbelievably, he promised Frontiers that he alone could (and would) stop Stratovarius from being active for the duration of the R.R. project, for marketing reasons. In exchange for this, Timo alone was paid 154,000 US dollars.



He did this behind our backs, as we were deep in pursuit of Sanctuary legally with a large legal bill. He still hasn't had the guts to tell us what he did. We pieced it together from various press releases of his and scattered email correspondence.



In October he sent us a mail saying he didn't want to continue, a quite impersonal way after having been in the same band for 12 years. He explained that he was tired of Stratovarius, and would concentrate on things like his opera. We had known for some time he really hated playing live.



He did not mention anything about his Frontiers deal, which placed the rest of us at great financial risk. He very clearly asked that we wouldn't contact him and try to talk him out of it, which we all respected. He would later make much of the fact that nobody tried to talk him out of it.



This year, Sanctuary agreed to settle, but Timo's announcement and Timo's announcement alone ruined that, leaving us with a debt of 54,000 US dollars. The total loss is around 346,000 US dollars. There was no reason for the timing of his announcement other than some foolish belief it would make the promotion of Timo's project record a bit easier. What he did to the rest of us was stupid, selfish and more than disappointing to us since we all stood shoulder to shoulder with him financially in 2004.



Then late January, surprisingly, he proposed us playing as hired guns on R.R. (turning it into a Stratovarius record), and doing a tour with Jari on bass. Apparently he again had financial problems due to his failed opera project. He then quickly dismissed the idea himself.



In short it's not so much a story of simmering discontent leading to a wise and respectable decision. It's definitely not a story of naivité. It's the story of Faust, the story of madness, of a band's natural and slow decline, but in the end something mundane: the story of a supreme narcissist going broke and betraying friends of 12 years who helped save him a few years earlier.



Hopefully this explains the situation a little bit. Sorry if it is long on business crap, and short on humor or music. This was a terrible, disappointing blow to us.



We would like to thank our fans who make it all worth it, and despite it all, we would like to thank Timo for the past, the nice music and the good moments.



The rest of us want to make clear that we are doing great and that we will continue making music together, because we care about each other and we care about our fans. We have grand plans indeed, and we will have some very interesting news in the months ahead!



-TK JM JJ LP

the remaining members of Stratovarius

Leer Comunicado oficial de Kotipelto, Johansson, Michael y Porra acerca de la ruptura de Stratovarius en El blog de AJHI

Leer Mas de Revolution Renaissance, Last Night on Earth Cantada por Michael Kiske en El blog de AJHI

Leer Muere STRATOVARIUS... Nace REVOLUTION RENAISSANCE en El blog de AJHI

Ver álbum de fotos | Leer Me case!!! en El blog de AJHI

Ver álbum de fotos | Leer Mi esposa, mi hijo y yo en el estadio en El blog de AJHI

Leer Nuevo disco en solitario de Tarja Turunen en El blog de AJHI

       Sin duda nuestros muchachos estan de moda debido a su exitosa gira por norteamerica, en la que solo supieron recoger ovaciones y buenas criticas. Ojala sigan cosechando los frutos de la ardua labor que por mas de 30 años ha venido desempeñando el maestro Abreu.

       Nacido en 1968 en Algeciras, José María Sánchez-Verdú estudió composición, dirección y musicología en el Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid y amplió sus estudios en la Accademia Chigiana de Siena (1992) y en la Musikhochschule de Fráncfort (1996-99).

       Ha recibido premios como el C. Halffter, el Ciutat d"Alcoi, el primer premio de la Junge Deutsche Philharmonie (como compositor de Alemania) y el premio de Composición de la Fundación Siemens (Múnich).

       Sus obras han estado programadas, entre otras, en la Biennale de Venecia, en el festival de Saarbrücken, en la Alte Oper (Fráncfort) o en el Lincoln Center (Nueva York).

Leer Es un milagro lo que esta ocurriendo en Venezuela, asegura Sanchez-Verdu en El blog de AJHI

Into The Storm                3:47
From The Ashes               5:26
Rising Again                      0:27
To Mother Earth              5:11
Rain                                     5:16
Leaving Hell                      4:20
Empress                              6:22
When The World              5:44
Opportunity                       7:14
Real World                         5:42
Hear Me Calling                4:14
Insurrection                      11:33

        Gamma Ray, cuyo lider Kai Hansen es una de las mentes mas influyentes en la historia del metal, cambio de sello discografico (SPV) y lanzara el 17 de Noviembre su mas reciente trabajo de estudio, denominado "Land of the Free II" continuacion de uno de sus albumes clasicos. Tuve la oportunidad de conseguir una de las copias de promocion y me di a la tarea de escucharlo y el disco me ha parecido excelente.

       En lineas generales es un compacto muy variado, con un sonido muy solido, con guitarras poderosas pero sin perder la melodia y sin renunciar a un estilo que Hansen creo hace ya mas de 20 años. Se pasean a traves de  los temas todos y cada uno de los cliches del genero, pero de una manera que gusta, con un muy buen estilo. Hansen hace un uso muy diverso de sus registros vocales, aunque me gustaria que le hubiara puesto mas ese toque "desgarrador" caracteristico de su voz.  

       Para destacar tenemos a temas rapidos y melodicos como From The Ashes y When The World, llenos de melodias geniales y coros estupendos; o variados medios tiempos como Empress y Opportunity, donde se demuestra que estos alemanes son fuertes en todos los terrenos. Como puntos negativos tengo que decir que los temas de apertura y de cierre decepcionan bastante, sobre todo Insurrection, que debio ser ese super tema de cierre al que nos tiene acostumbrado Kai y compañia, pero que se queda solo en un buen tema, que aburre por lo largo que se hacen los 11 minutos con tan pocas ideas para implementar.

       Si solo hubieran conseguido medianamente igualar con este ultimo corte al genial Armageddom, ya estuvieramos hablando del mejor disco en la historia reciente de Gamma Ray, pero con lo que tiene le es suficiente para convertirse en un genial album y un imprescindible para los amantes de las buenas y poderosas melodias. LARGA VIDA GAMMA RAY!!! 

VALORACION 8/10 

Leer Review "Land of the Free II" 2007 Gamma Ray en El blog de AJHI

Leer Nuestra Juvenil Simon Bolivar, con Dudamel al frente, destacan en el Fórum Universal de las Culturas en El blog de AJHI

 http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccolò_Paganini

Leer Nicolo Paganini, su estigma y su obra. en El blog de AJHI

Leer Melodia Infinita en El blog de AJHI