Four years after their debut album ‘Eye On The Sky’, Finnish Stargazery releases it’s successor ‘Stars Aligned’. Thae album contains 13 very good tracks, the last of which is sung in their mother tongue.
For fans of old style, mid eighties hard rock – think Rainbow in their latter period, with a hint of Dio, and even a pinch of Black Sabbath, and hey, presto, you’ve more or less found the sound of Stargazery. Keyboards are an essential element in their music, not that the other instruments do not play a vital part in it as well, but it’s the keyboards that make or break the sound of the band here. Take for instance track 3 ‘Missed The Train To Paradise’. Leave out the keyboards, and you’d get a totally different song, which wouldn’t sound as catchy as now. What also calls for praise is the vocal prestation by Jari Tiura, who has a fantastic range. He sounds as if they melted together the voices from some of rock’s greatest vocalists, like Graham Bonnet and Rob Rock. There is however a minor point on this album as well. Not all tracks are of the same consistency, and that’s sad, because otherwise it could have been a fantastic album.