Stratovarius - Infinite [2000]

Here we go again. You're probably wondering why I should even bother with this one, as most seem to know how misguided it is (unlike Destiny and Visions, which everyone seems delusion about). Yep, this is "good" old European power metal right here, taken to a whole new ridiculous level of cheese. In other words, it's a normal 90's Stratovarius album. To answer your question, I choose to bother with this one because I'm both a completist and one who wants justice to be done. Justice, in this case, is ensuring that no one else gets victimized by this worthless crap. At least their previous albums had highlights and good monents in there; this is basically awful from beginning to end, or at least so boring that it's pointless to listen to.

Opener Hunting High and Low just personifies everything that's wrong with Infinite. This song is the template for every one of the others, so you'd hope that it could be somewhat decent. Guess what? It's bad. Really bad. Besides being identical to practically every other song Stratovarius has ever done, it also manages to be even worse than those with its horrible lyrics and groan-inducing chorus. Anything this melodic and desperately sing-along bores me to no end. Maybe this would have been a good song if it, I don't know, had a good vocal performance to back it up, but Kotipelto just makes it worse. Apparently he's given up on even acting like he gives a shit about this band, as he doesn't seem to be slightly trying here. No emotion at all.

And just think, that's only one song. For all the others I could pretty much put 'insert Hunting High and Low review here' and be done with it, but unfortunately, I'm forced to suffer through finding the exact words to tell you why every song on this album sucks. Oh, I almost forgot, you know those epicly long Stratovarius "songs" that I love so much? Well, just like on Destiny, we get two more! Lucky us! Mother Gaia comes early on to steal away our hopes of there being a decent song on the album. It's basically an eight minute ballad with no repeating parts that goes absolutely nowhere. The mid-section piano part with Kotipelto's lounge singing is completely and utterly putrid. Then the title track closes out this cadaver of an album, and keeping with the tradition of Stratovarius title tracks on the last three albums, it drags on endlessly and lifelessly.

There are more straightforward power tracks in the bunch besides the opener, providing little jolts of the scant quality to be found here. Most of them aren't really good, just settling for being extremely average, if that's even possible. Once again, they're exactly as you would expect: you know, pretty much the same. Same structures, same choruses, just with different lyrics of equally pitiful quality and enough subtle differences in songwriting for them to register as separate tracks. The guilty party includes many, Phoenix being the frontrunner and Freedom being the runt of an already small litter with it's pathetic, nauseating anthemic chorus. You really can't go wrong here; there's plenty of equally mediocre songs to chose from  for those who will accept low grade, zero effort crap. For those who like good music with purpose and quality, walk the other way now; you won't find either of those here.

   Overall: 4.5/10 (Poor - another one off the factory line)