Speed of Light

The first seconds of "Speed of Light" are essentially a declaration of intent: everything is fast, everything is precise, and there will be no apologies for either. The opening guitar run is textbook Timo Tolkki neoclassical — scales moving at a tempo that requires genuine technical command, played cleanly and without the stiffness that sometimes makes highly technical metal feel mechanical rather than musical. What saves "Speed of Light" from being a mere technical exercise is the way the verses pull back slightly, giving Kotipelto space to sing melodic lines that carry actual emotional content before the instrumental passages remind you what the band is physically capable of. Johansson's keyboard work is particularly striking here — rather than underlining the guitar leads he tends to develop parallel lines that create a kind of counterpoint, two virtuoso voices in conversation rather than one demonstrating and the other accompanying. The song occupies a very specific kind of euphoria: not the warm, reflective kind but the cold, kinetic kind — the feeling of moving faster than seems reasonable, of physical or mental velocity that temporarily suspends anxiety because there's simply no room for it at this speed. It belongs in a gym during the last push of something difficult, or at the opening of a night when you want to reset completely and arrive somewhere different from where you started. It is unambiguous in its purpose and entirely honest about what it offers, which is a rare quality in any music that operates this close to the edge of technical excess.