Artist: Kotipelto 
   Title: Serenity
   Label: AFM Records

There aren’t many vocalists who's voices are unique and instantly recognisable outside of their main bands, but like Halford, Dio, Coverdale, Perry, Johnson and the like, Timo Kotipelto stands as one of those voices.  Metallers from around the world unite in saying that he has put the band Stratovarius on the map with his impeccable vocal talent.

'Serenity' is Kotipelto’s latest solo release and is another tour de force both vocally and musically with the first single 'Sleep Well' already breaking into the Finnish charts.

The album gets to an outstanding start with ‘Once Upon A Time’ and instantly I was hooked on this stomping metal extravaganza with not only Timo’s outstanding vocals, but also Toumas Wainola’s guitars and Lauri Porra’s thunderous bass guitar work.

The album continues with the single ‘Sleep Well’ and you can see why the Finnish metalheads loved this track.  It has that anthemic feel about it with a real chorus you can sing along too, and would fit well on any Stratovarius release.

The album goes from strength to strength as the title track ‘Serenity’ carries on this superb Melodic Metal release and continues where the last track left off, with its huge guitar sound and pulsating rhythm section. ‘City of Mysteries’ is another piece of thumping metal where Kotipelto’s really shines vocally.

With some albums you can pick out a favourite track easily but this album has so many great songs on it that I find it hard to pick out one individual stand out track.  Perhaps one that comes close is ‘King Anti-Midas’ with its huge, and I mean huge, keyboards courtesy of Janne Wirman and its dominant rhythm section and varying tempo changes throughout.  Quite superb stuff indeed.

The tempo is picked up once more with the tremendous ‘Angels Will Cry’, another anthemic pumping metal onslaught of the highest calibre.  After this metal attack it's time to slow things down with the superlative mellow tones of ‘After The Rain’.  One of those tracks that will stay with you forever, with Timo at his vocal best once again on this song.

It's time to pick up the pace once again, this time with the riff laden ‘Mr Know-It-All’.  A track that we can all relate to all as we all have someone in our lives who are a right 'Mr Know-It-All'.  As the line goes ... “there are people who want to be at the centre of every scene” ... you know who you are!

As the album grows ever closer to an end it's time for the big guns to round off the album.  Firstly it's ‘Dreams And Reality’, a great track that finds Wainola stamping his mark on the track with some quite outstanding guitars.  The album closes with probably the highlight for me if I was honest, the quite unparalleled eight minute-plus epic ‘Last Defender’, which rounds of an quite superb album from the Stratovarius frontman and with an impending tour later this spring with Chris Caffery, let's hope some UK dates are announced so that we Brits who appreciate good anthemic metal can show our appreciation at a live show. 

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