Mike Khalilov

Mike Khalilov — keyboardist — was part of Revolution Renaissance, the band created by Timo Tolkki between 2008 and 2010. The project had a specific origin: Tolkki, composer and guitarist of Stratovarius's classic phase, left the band in 2008 after a series of public conflicts and put together a new group to keep writing the kind of material he had become known for — melodic power metal with a strong symphonic component. In this kind of repertoire the keyboard has a structuring function. It carries the orchestral layers that give the genre its scale and shares solo passages with the guitar, in the tradition Stratovarius itself established in the 1990s. Revolution Renaissance produced three records — New Era (2008), Age of Aquarius (2009) and Trinity (2010) — before Tolkki closed the project and moved on to other initiatives. It is a short chapter, but it documents the moment when one of European power metal's most influential figures rebuilt his career from scratch.