Kotipelto & Liimatainen

Kotipelto & Liimatainen was born from the partnership between Timo Kotipelto, vocalist of Stratovarius, and Jani Liimatainen, former Sonata Arctica guitarist and his bandmate in Cain's Offering. The duo brought to the stage a format stripped down to voice and acoustic guitar, removing from power metal its layers of keyboards, double bass drums and expansive production. The result revealed with clarity what is so often buried under the volume: the strength of the melodies and Kotipelto's precise delivery. Released in 2012, the album Blackoustic gathered acoustic versions of material tied to Stratovarius, Sonata Arctica and Kotipelto's solo career, alongside reinterpretations of artists such as Gary Moore, The Who, Deep Purple and Rainbow. Among the tracks are "Black Diamond", "Hunting High and Low", "My Selene", "Out in the Fields" and "Rainbow Eyes". "Where My Rainbow Ends", written by Liimatainen, was the album's only original composition. More than a collection of covers, Blackoustic works as an intimate reading of Finnish melodic metal. Liimatainen's guitar preserves the complexity of the arrangements without artificially trying to reproduce a full band, while Kotipelto adapts his voice to a closer, more vulnerable dynamic. The project demonstrates that good songs survive without the usual wall of sound. The bad ones, generally, ask for more amplifiers.