This came out in 2000 — or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
The cover of this Finnish quintet’s latest album Infinite — their 11th, believe it or not — is a painting of golden dolphins jumping back and forth between alternate worlds.
Presumably, one of them is a land where time stopped about 1985 and where Stratovarius’s brand of melodically overblown hair-metal never went out of style. It’s a land where a band that combines the galloping speed of Iron Maiden, the falsetto pomp and grandeur of Queen and the intricately proggy arrangements of a million guitar-wank outfits could somehow top the charts. A land where the masses cry out for epic-length, multi-layered opuses with titles such as Mother Gaia and Phoenix. And a land where an anachronistic Finnish band can somehow sustain a career that has lasted for 11 albums — including a greatest-hits collection and a double-live set. If you’re a prog-metalloid, maybe that’s your idea of heaven. For the rest of us, it’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.
