Origin:	Finland
Genres:	Hard Rock, Power Metal
DISBANDED

Page online:	September 30, 2008
Last update/review:	October 31, 2010

Revolution Renaissance

The rise and eventual fall of Stratovarius is familiar to most by now. One of Europe's pioneering power metal bands, Stratovarius had an extremely successful run in the nineties and beyond, but mainman Timo Tolkki's personal issues eventually took their toll, and eventually the band publicly flamed out. By that time Tolkki already had ideas and visions for a new project, and Revolution Renaissance became that vision, with New Era (originally planned as the next Stratovarius album) seeing the light of day in 2008. Recorded in project mode with three well-known Euro power metal vocalists sharing vocal duties, New Era is a relatively straightfoward hard rock-inspired power metal album, with Tolkki more or less playing it safe -- there's nothing really wrong here, but as a start of a new project one might have hoped for something more momentous. Eventually he put a more permanent band together and put out another album album in 2009, but response to the band seemed to be luke-warm, and perhaps sensing this, Tolkki decided to break up the group in July 2010, with a final album Trinity completing the band's legacy.