Fuel for the Fire

Fuel for the Fire is what a bartender who had just won a television singing contest put on the board two months later. Through the 2007 Finnish Idols, Ari Koivunen sang nothing but metal: Whitesnake, Led Zeppelin, Stratovarius, Sonata Arctica. The judges complained repeatedly, and in the fourth final he took an unprecedented four negative reviews, one from every judge. His answer: he saw no reason to consider what people might like, since they seemed to like the same thing he did. On 6 April, at the Helsinki Ice Hall, he won with fifty-seven per cent of the public vote. The songs were written by the central figures of Finnish metal — Jarkko Ahola, Marco Hietala, Timo Tolkki, Tony Kakko, Janne Joutsenniemi; which is to say the writers of Teräsbetoni, Nightwish, Stratovarius and Sonata Arctica. Janne Wirman of Children of Bodom is among the players. Nino Laurenne and Pasi Heikkilä produced. Released on 30 May, it went straight to number one and was platinum inside a week — then held the top for twelve consecutive weeks, the first album ever to do so on the official Finnish chart.