Stratovarius - Unbreakable (2013, CDS) / AvaxHome

With the release of Stratovarius's latest single, they've definitely gone in a new, unexpected direction. Gone is the lighthearted, meandering and progressive sound of Polaris and the slightly darker but still meandering sound of Elysium. Unbreakable is heavier, more straightforward, and more memorable, and really shows how the band has surpassed itself more and more as time goes on.

If I had to compare it to any previous single, I would definitely say it's comparable to Maniac Dance. Both songs don't feature keyboards much except for the intriguing intro, and are heavy-hitting compared to others such as I Walk To My Own Song or SOS. But where Maniac Dance marked the tensions and disintegration of the band, Unbreakable marks the unity and harmony of the new band and the new drummer Rolf Pilve.

Pilve himself has a more clear-cut pattern to his drumming than Michael did, and with the release of Nemesis we can explore it further and see if this will be good or bad for future releases. But as far as this song goes, he and Matias really take their time to shine, notably on the solo and the part right after.

As for the other four, they're interesting choices to put on the EP. "The Game Never Ends" was split from the bottom up; all the instrumentation that wasn't so noticeable before is now clarified and brought closer to the front (although still underneath everything else).

The biggest and most audible change has to be to "Freedom". A big problem I had with about 70% of Jari Kainulainen's work with Stratovarius is not actually being able to hear Jari Kainulainen. This remastery fixes that problem right up and now I know for a fact that there was a bassist in this song. Hopefully this means we'll get to hear more of Porra in the album, which is always a good thing.

All that aside, this is definitely heralding a strong release on Strat's part and I'm excited to hear the rest of the album!

www.metal-archives.com

Musicians:

Vocals : Timo Kotipelto
Bass on tracks 4 and 5 : Jari Kainulainen
Guitars on tracks 4 and 5 : Timo Tolkki
Drums on track 1 : Rolf Pilve
Guitars on tracks 1, 2 and 3 : Matias Kupiainen
Bass and 1, 2 and 3 : Lauri Porra
Keyboards : Jens Johansson
Drums on tracks 2, 3, 4 and 5 : Jörg Michael

Track 1 taken from the new album "Nemesis"
Track 2 taken from "Polaris"
Track 3 taken from "Elysium"
Track 4 taken from "Infinite"
Track 5 taken from "Intemission"
Tracks 2-5 remastered in 2012

Track List:

01. Unbreakable [4:40]
02. Falling Star [4:31]
03. The Game never Ends [3:51]
04. Freedom [5:05]
05. Why are we here [4:41]

EAC extraction logfile

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009

EAC extraction logfile from 3. February 2013, 14:51

Stratovarius / Unbreakable

Used drive : TSSTcorpDVD+-RW TS-H653G Adapter: 0 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 40 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : F:\progjes\## programma's van C\EAC\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -6 -V %s

TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 4:39.46 | 0 | 20970
2 | 4:39.46 | 4:31.04 | 20971 | 41299
3 | 9:10.50 | 3:51.11 | 41300 | 58635
4 | 13:01.61 | 5:05.20 | 58636 | 81530
5 | 18:07.06 | 4:40.73 | 81531 | 102603

Range status and errors

Selected range

Filename C:\Users\sammy\Music\Stratovarius - Unbreakable (2013)\Stratovarius - Unbreakable.wav

Peak level 99.9 %
Range quality 100.0 %
Copy CRC 871FCD39
Copy OK

No errors occurred

AccurateRip summary

Track 1 not present in database
Track 2 not present in database
Track 3 not present in database
Track 4 not present in database
Track 5 not present in database

None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database

End of status report

Not my rip, not my scan-job. Thx very much to the original uploader TWISTEDSAM[MMT]!
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