KOTIPELTO - Serenity

Kotipelto - Serenity

10 songs
45:28 minutes
****
AFM

Bandpage

Timo Kotipelto from Helsinki has been the Stratovarius vocalist from 1994 to 2003 before he was kicked out. One reason may have been his solo career he started in 2002. Serenity is already Timo Kotipelto’s third album without Stratovarius, but the first one involving a real band instead of session musicians. The album has been popular in Finland where the single Sleep Well climbed to position number 5 in the charts and the album reached position number 8.

Stratovarius and Timo Kotipelto have been important and popular figures in the melodic metal genre, but I will never grow too fond of that kind of music. There are no doubts about Timo Totipelto’s lyrical achievements, and the production is as epic as it should be for melodic metal. The melodies and choruses are ok, the rhythm section is powerful enough and the keyboards are never too dominant.

But the songs on Serenity really don’t bring anything new into the genre and the songs are often too predictable. Kotipelto try to get some variation into the record by playing different genres. The single Sleep Well could have been performed by Europe twenty years ago. King Anti-Midas is a classic 80s A.O.R. track. Angels Will Cry is a faster track, but more aggression wouldn’t have been a bad decision. After The Rain sounds like a Helloween ballad and the eight minute long Last Defender tries to introduce epic elements, but the song still somehow fails.

I know that this review hasn’t been too fair as I’m not the biggest fan of this genre. But during the last few years, I had to review a lot of melodic metal albums and most of them have been more exciting and varied than Serenity does.

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