Jari Kainulainen

Jari Kainulainen was Stratovarius's bassist between 1993 and 2005 — the twelve years covering the band's entire classic era. Born in Finland in 1970, he joined in time to record Fourth Dimension (1995) and stayed through Episode (1996), Visions (1997), Destiny (1998), Infinite (2000) and both volumes of Elements (2003). His work is foundational in a repertoire that leaves little free space. With guitar and keyboards contesting the foreground in alternating solos, and tempos that rarely drop, it falls to the bass to hold the harmonic floor steady and match the speed without blurring — a demanding, barely visible function, and the condition for the duel between Timo Tolkki and Jens Johansson to work above it. He left in 2005, in the most troubled period of the group's history, when internal tensions nearly dissolved the band. Afterwards he joined Evergrey, the Swedish progressive metal band, and took part in Symfonia, the project Timo Tolkki assembled in 2010 bringing together, among others, the Brazilian singer Andre Matos and drummer Uli Kusch — a reunion with his old Stratovarius companion outside the band that had joined them.