Matias Kupiainen

Matias Kupiainen has been Stratovarius's guitarist since 2008, when he took the place left by Timo Tolkki — the band's founder, principal composer and producer. Few successions in metal have been so exposed: replacing someone who had created a group's entire identity, and doing so before an audience that knew every solo by heart. Born in Finland in 1983, he was little known when he joined. His answer to the problem was not to compete with memory: instead of imitating Tolkki's neoclassical phrasing, he brought a more modern vocabulary, a cleaner tone and an approach that gives room to Jens Johansson's keyboards rather than contesting them. Post-2008 Stratovarius sounds different by choice, not by incapacity. Over time his role widened well beyond the guitar. Kupiainen also took on the band's production and sound engineering, recording and mixing the albums from Nemesis (2013) onward — which means the same musician who replaced Tolkki on stage ended up occupying the role Tolkki held in the studio as well. He recorded Polaris (2009), Elysium (2011), Nemesis (2013), Eternal (2015) and Survive (2022).