Some 25 years into a mountain range of dizzying career highs and devastating personal lows, Finland’s legendary Stratovarius has been reborn. Reconfigured for the new dark age with freshly recruited guitarist Matias Kupiainen and bassist Lauri Porra at the ready, the classically inspired heavy metal collective (who crafted their moniker from an amalgam of Stratocaster and Stradivarius) have at last emerged from their self-imposed four-year hiatus. Too long overshadowed by infighting and a drawn-out legal battle with the ill-fated Sanctuary label, the band was restless to get down to the business of making their extreme and intricate brand of music. According to founding member and keyboardist Jens Johansson, the turning point came when he and the boys retreated to the Finnish countryside to collect their thoughts and determine the path that the world-renowned act would ultimately take.

“It’s strange,” he says. “It doesn’t seem like a year has passed since we went on retreat to a cottage by the sea in the Finnish forest to relax and see if we could create some new material. I had a grab bag of a few rough ideas I had been working on and everyone brought their ideas to the table. It was a democratic process and it really could have gone in any direction at that point, right down to our name. Someone even suggested calling ourselves ‘Killing an Arab’ after the old song by The Cure. I think that would have gone over well in Israel.”

The name of his band may have been up for grabs, but when it came to deciphering the essence of their sound, the melody and momentum of those initial seaside rehearsals left Jens with no doubt that the proof was in the pounding. With thousands of live performances, dozens of studio recordings and an equally impressive list of collaborations to his credit, Johansson was confident that he knew exactly what he was hearing.

“Once we heard the drum tracks we captured during those sessions, we knew it was Stratovarius,” he recalls. “It was undeniable. And as soon as we started to layer in the vocals and keyboards it became very clear that this was a Stratovarius album like the ones we were making five or six years ago. Polaris was made for the people who heard Stratovarius in 2003 and really fell in love with that sound; we wanted to make a perfect and positive album to make the old fans happy.”

In May 2009, Stratovarius began touring for the first time without longtime guitarist Timo Tolkki, who completely signed off on the band for the last time in 2008 after a nervous breakdown. Timo has since gone on to form Revolution Renaissance, leaving Johansson, a former member of Yngwie Malmsteen’s orchestra, at the helm of the leviathan of a project. For his part, Johansson only requires that his bandmates help keep his experimental wanderlust in check.

“We’re extremely progressive, but intelligently so,” he says. “We know we have a responsibility to those who love the music and, for my part, I try not to offend their ears with anything too experimental. I like the strange stuff. Most musicians are strange people. Yngwie’s band was full of weirdos, let me tell you.”

He laughs. “The weirder the better as far as I’m concerned.”