STRATOVARIUS DISCOGRAPHY

STRATOVARIUS  DISCOGRAPHY

Stratovarius (a portmanteau of Stratocaster and Stradivarius) was founded by Tuomo Lassila, John Vihervä, and Staffan Stråhlman originally under the name Black Water. The name "Stratovarius" was invented by Lassila.

The music of early Stratovarius was very different from what it is today. Back then it was heavily influenced by Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne. Guitar player Staffan brought in some classical elements. Bass player John left the band by the end of 1984 and was replaced by Jyrki Lentonen, who previously played with Timo Tolkki in a band called Road Block.

After playing some gigs and recording two demos, in December 1985 Staffan did not want to play in Stratovarius anymore and he left one week before the band was supposed to play a gig in Aalborg, Denmark. Tuomo Lassila phoned to Timo Tolkki and asked him to join the band. Timo learned all the songs from cassette tape and after a few rehearsals the band travelled to Denmark. At that time Tuomo was still singing and playing the drums at the same time. It soon became evident that the band needed a singer because of Tuomo's vocal range. However, good singers are few and far between and so Timo Tolkki took over the vocal duties. At this point the music was starting to sound more like it is today: very melodic and classically influenced. Timo Tolkki brought along his influences; Blackmore, Rainbow and Baroque music. The band rehearsed and gigged extensively in Helsinki and made its first demo tape under this line up in 1987. It contained songs "Future Shock", "Fright Night" and "Night Screamer". After Denmark Tolkki joined the army and the guys agreed to continue when Timo came back.

The demos were sent to various record companies in Finland and CBS Finland wanted to sign the band after seeing a show at Tavastia Club, Helsinki. At this point the band had a new keyboard player Antti Ikonen. The band recorded its first single "Future Shock/Witch Hunt" in 1988. This was followed by another single "Black Night/Night Screamer" in the beginning of 1989 and finally the debut album "Fright Night" saw daylight in May 1989.

The band gigged extensively during the summer and autumn 1989. After all this bass player Jyrki Lentonen left the band. New material was written and demoed early 1990 but CBS lost interest of releasing more Stratovarius material. The band did not give up but rehearsed a lot and made new songs and finally went to record the follow-up to "Fright Night". All this time the band did not have a record contract and it had to finance the recordings by itself. Timo played all the bass parts, even though there is a photo of a new bassist Jari Behm in "Twilight Time". Soon Jari was asked to leave the band because his style of playing did not fit to the band's music at all.

The second album called "Stratovarius II" was released in Finland early 1992. At this point it was pretty clear that the market for Stratovarius was outside Finland. Many tapes were sent all over the world and Shark Records wanted to sign the band after hearing the song "Hands of Time". Finally "Stratovarius II" was released with a new cover and a new name "Twilight Time" in October 1992 all over the Europe. Soon import copies started to spread to the Japanese market and "Twilight Time" was five months in Top 10 of import disks in Japan. Eventually it became the best selling import album in Japan in 1993. The band also got a big record contract with JVC Victor Entertainment in Japan which released "Twilight Time" in July 1993. Timo Tolkki flew to Japan for the first time in the same month to do promotion and saw that the bands popularity was skyrocketing with enthusiastic fans. The spare time between searching for the record deal was spent on writing new material and the band recorded new songs during the whole year 1993. Also a new bass player Jari Kainulainen joined the band as 70% of the new material was already recorded. At this time Tuomo Lassila had a severe stress injury in his both hands and was not able to play drums for 8 weeks. The record had to be completed with Kingston Wall drummer Sami Kuoppamäki, who played on 4 tracks.

Finally the third album "Dreamspace" was released worldwide in February and March 1994. It was highly praised among the critics and took the bands popularity to a different level. In June the band headed to Japan for the first tour and played concerts in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya seeing Japanese fans face to face for the first time. In Finland they played just one gig before heading for Japan in the now defunct, legendary Shadow Club in Helsinki. This was also JK's very first live appearance with Stratovarius.

At this stage Timo Tolkki decided that his singing days were over and that the band should find a proper singer to take the band's sound even further. Timo Kotipelto was recommended and a successful audition was arranged. Kotipelto's first recording with the band, "Fourth Dimension," was released worldwide in March 1995 and it doubled the sales of "Dreamspace".

The band toured heavily playing shows in all over Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Finland, Greece and Japan. After all these tours Tuomo Lassila and Antti Ikonen, the long time members were asked to leave the band. There were many reasons for this line up change, the most important were personal chemistry and musical differences, mainly that Timo Tolkki did not believe they had the technical ability to play the new material he was envisaging. German drummer Jörg Michael and Swedish keyboard player Jens Johansson were hired as their replacements.

The fifth album "Episode" marks the debut was what is generally considered the band's classic line-up. The album marked a further progression of the new Stratovarius sound with increased symphonic elements.

Stratovarius' next album "Visions" was released in the April of 1997 and it hit the Finnish charts position #5 in an instant. It spent a total of 24 weeks on the Finnish Top 40. "Visions" also launched an extensive tour, during which Stratovarius entertained not only Finns but also their fans in Japan, Europe and South America. "Visions" exceeded the gold disc plateau of 20.000 sold copies in Finland and the gold disc was celebrated at Tavastia Club in Helsinki June 10th 1998 with a little party and a special gig with a couple of unusual song choices.

April 1998 Stratovarius started rehearsing their new studio material for the forthcoming album, their seventh full length studio release "Destiny" The album was recorded at Finnvox studios during the spring and summer of 1998 and the release date was October 5th 1998. The first single from the album is entitled SOS was released August 17th and it reached #3 on Finnish single charts. Strangely enough, Destiny itself debuted the Finnish charts on position #1 the Thursday BEFORE it was officially released.

The coming of the year 1999 saw Stratovarius again surpassing the gold disc plateau with "Destiny." Stratovarius also received laurels from Finnish record industry at this time when they were awarded an "Emma" trophy for being an outstanding export band.

At the end of 2000 Stratovarius returned form their most successful and longest tour ever, promoting the Infinite album. Following this they decided to take an extended break. In this time Timo Tolkki and Timo Kotipelto worked on solo albums. A B-side and bonus track compilation called "Intermission" including 4 new songs was released in 2001 to close the gap until the new album would be released followed by a very selective choice of festival appearance in summer 2001.

After a year's break Stratovarius entered the studio again in summer 2002 to work on their next album, called "Elements Pt. 1," released the following spring. In late 2003, tension began building within the band. Timo Tolkki became irritable with the other band members. He claimed to be receiving death threats and stated that he had hired trained bodyguards. Finally, in September, he decided that some of the other members were a threat to the direction he wanted Stratovarius to go in. In the end, Timo Kotipelto and Jörg Michael were expelled from the band. At the time both claimed they were happy to leave, because they did not want to around the irrational Tolkki any longer.

The following months saw a bizarre series of claims, announcements and alleged events come from Stratovarius,mostly originating from Timo Tolkki.

In January 2004, Anders Johansson and Katriina "Miss K" Wiiala were officially announced to replace Jörg and Timo, respectively. A now-infamous photoshoot of Miss K with a mouth full of fake blood was posted on the Stratovarius website around this time as well. Anders soon backed out of the arrangement after Tolkki made an announcement that he had joined Stratovarius permanently - he had, in fact, only agreed to perform as a session musician on the next album as a favor to his brother Jens.

In February 2004, Timo Tolkki claimed to have been assaulted, beaten, and stabbed by an unknown attacker. A suspiciously fake-looking photo of an "injured" Tolkki was posted online. It was later said that he was soon re-hospitalized following a suicide attempt.

In the aftermath of this, Tolkki announced he was going to try and sit down with the members (past and present) to sort everything out, and disband Stratovarius if they could no longer co-operate.

The band eventually reunited in January 2005 and later released a self-titled comeback album. This would be the last album with the 'classic' line-up, however, as bassist Jari Kainulainen left soon afterwards. Lauri Porra, from Sinergy and many other Finnish projects, was brought in to replace him. Porra has also released a solo album of jazzy bass-led music.

On April 2nd, 2008, Timo Tolkki announced that Stratovarius has split up due to irresolvable tensions between himself, Timo Kotipelto and Jörg Michael, and that music he had written for the next Stratovarius album would be used for his new project, Revolution Renaissance.

In June 2008 however, Tolkki instead released the contractual rights to both the Stratovarius name and back catalogue to Kotipelto, Johansson and Michael, allowing them to carry on the band with Lauri Porra and a new guitarist.

Later that month, Tolkki said that he will be making one more Stratovarius album, "the last one", with the original drummer Tuomo Lassila and keyboardist Antti Ikonen, with Tolkki singing and playing guitar. The album will presumably be recorded under a different band name.

The remaining four members chose Matias Kupiainen as their new guitarist in August 2008, and later confirmed they would continue under the name Stratovarius.

Timo Tolkki confirmed in a lengthy interview in 2008 that many stories from the time of the band splitting apart (including his assault, the hiring of "Miss K" and Jens Johansson urinating on him onstage) had been entirely fabricated, and claimed the complicity of the rest of the band, as well as their management and record label.

Alex Landenburg of At Vance filled in on drums in late 2010 when Jörg Michael was receiving treatment for cancer.

Album Discography

• 1987 - Demo  
• 1989 - Fright Night Full-length
• 1992 - II Full-length
• 1992 - Twilight Time Full-length
• 1994 - Dreamspace Full-length
• 1995 - Fourth Dimension Full-length
• 1996 - Episode Full-length
• 1997 - Visions Full-length
• 1997 - The Past and Now Compilation  
• 1998 - Visions of Europe Live album
• 1998 - Destiny Full-length
• 1999 - The Chosen Ones Compilation
• 2000 - Infinite Full-length
• 2000 - 14 Diamonds Compilation  
• 2001 - Intermission Compilation
• 2003 - Elements Pt. 1 Full-length
• 2003 - Elements Pt. 2 Full-length
• 2005 - Elements Pt.1 / Elements Pt.2 - Double Edition Compilation  
• 2005 - Stratovarius Full-length
• 2006 - Black Diamond: The Anthology Compilation  
• 2009 - Polaris Full-length
• 2010 - Darkest Hours EP
• 2011 - Elysium Full-length
• 2012 - Under Flaming Winter Skies - Live in Tampere Live album
• 2012 - Infinite + Intermission Compilation
• 2013 - Unbreakable EP
• 2013 - Nemesis Full-length
• 2014 - Elements Pt. 1 & 2 Compilation  
• 2015 - Polaris - Elysium - Nemesis Boxed set
• 2015 - Eternal Full-length
• 2016 - Best Of Compilation
• 2018 - Enigma: Intermission II Compilation