Monday, April 05, 2010

570. Stratovarius / Intermission. 2001. 3/5


Intermission this most certainly is, with a bundle of tracks that only a hardy few could proclaim to have experienced a majority of before this release came along.

The first four songs are all "previously unreleased tracks", and surprisingly for these type of tracks they are pretty good. I say surprisingly, because if they haven't been released before, then there must have been a reason why in the first place. In this instance, the first two songs "Will My Soul Ever Rest in Peace?" and "Falling Into Fantasy" are both fine examples of Stratovarius titles. Perhaps the other two are not in the finest catagory.

Following this are three cover songs. Judas Priest's "Bloodstone", is okay, but really lacks the original's power. Rainbow's "Kill the King", again just doesn't have the same quality of the original. I originally heard this on the tribute album Holy Dio: A Tribute to the Voice of Metal: Ronnie James Dio, which strangely has two versions of this song on it - the one by Stratovarius and the one by Primal Fear. Sadly for the Strats, Primal Fear's version craps all over this one. Thirdly is another Rainbow song, a live version of "I Surrender", which is a much better effort than the previous two songs here.

Following this is a bunch of extra songs from singles and box sets and the like, the majority from Japanese editions which always seem to carry these types of songs to entice their citizens to buy their own editions rather than those from overseas. The quality of tracks is a mixture.

Overall, this is worth a listen. Whether you will come back to it often is open to question, but as a rarity of sorts it is something a fan of the band will want to possess a copy of.

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