Metal Reviews

And to those of you who will complain that this has ruined a thread intended to be a new BG love fest, fuck you. Grow a sack and at least try to have a good reason for what you say before you call someone a dickhead...or something like that.

I completely disagree. I actually think 'Nightfall in Middle Earth' is one of their weaker albums.

It lacks the punch of their older albums and the proggier stuff from ANATO, so it is stuck somewhere in the middle. Plus the narration tracks on the album are annoying and manage to help break up the momentum of the listen. I'm not denying it has some excellent material anyway but I never found it to be the 'classic' it is considered by most.

I listen to 'Imaginations From the Other Side', 'Somewhere Far Beyond', or ANATO all at least 5 times as much as Nightfall, and I will go to my grave convinced Imaginations was the best album they ever made.

It's as if you ripped my stance on Nightfall straight from my mind. You're right, it does have some excellent material, but it's just a "Good but not great" album for me overall. Glad to see that I'm not the only one with that opinion.

And yes, Imaginations is indeed their best work, in my opinion at least.

I sort of agree and disagree with both of you. I mean, I too think Imaginations is their best work, but I disagree that Nightfall is one of their weaker albums. It's a fantastic album, with great ideas and amazing atmosphere and it's also a pretty unique sounding album, both in their discography and the metal world.

As for what came after NIME, yeah, I do agree with HT that is overblown and way too pompous and that good ideas became fewer than before and even those that still existed were drowned in overproduction. There's still some good stuff on these albums, more on ANATO that on ATITM, but it's hardly a match to their older works.

But these new stuff, I disagree that it follows the same line. The few riffs I heard sounded more fresh and muscular than anything on their latest albums, it sounds like a returning to their old sound, it's more reminiscent of Imaginations/SFB than of ANATO. Assuming they have more riffs like those and they don't drown them in 1000 layers, we may end up with a good ol' Guardian album on our hands again.

Well I think there needs to be a distinction between what people think is the "best" BG album and which is their favorite. My favorite is Tales from the Twighlight World, but I think their best album is Nightfall. It tied together everything they had incorporated over the span of their career into one brilliantly complex effort. Very few bands will ever be able to achieve anything even moderalely close to the gargantuan task that was Nightfall. But still, my favorite album, the one I listen to most, is Tales from the Twighlight World, it's the perfect mix of thrash and power.

I'll agree with you on that at least. I think Tales beats even Iced Earth and the like when it comes to Thrash / Power metal.

I think just about anything beats Iced Earth, ha.

It feels so dirty agreeing with H_T. +1 on Tales being awesome and I say their best solely because Nightfall is lame as all fuck and Imaginations is a little too dragons, swords and Merlin for me.

Nightfall is an excellent album, what i find amazing about it is that they were able to pull off the conceptual part of the album marvelously without sounding too cheesy in the process (for a Power metal band anyway), but also the songs stand very well on their own and so many of them are now classics, my favourite still is Tales From The Twilight World but you seriously cant go wrong with any of the first 6 BG albums.

Tis true, its at 7 and up that you really have to think to yourself, "what went wrong here?" Then you go back to the first 6 and realize that there's no way they could top that. Thomen was right in leaving a sinking ship, but let's be clear, Savage Circus is no BG, but is preferable to new BG. There I said it.

I agree with this as well. But in no way does Savage Circus beat old BG, as much as I love SC.

Agreed, Savage Circus will never be good enough to wipe old BG's ass....if old BG were a person.

The fact that I gave Savage Circus' latest a 92 really tells how much I love Blind Guardian's older material.

New or old, I love everything by BG. Power metal fan boy, BG fan boy... whatever. They are amazing musicians and songwriters.

Well, my fav by last is Imaginations... in my opinion is the best too, the perfect combination of their early thradh days and the overproduced new Blind Guardian... But all BG is good BG.

First single, A Voice In The Dark, will be out in June.

http://www.nuclearblast.de/showShopProd ... 69942&kat=

Good stuff. I'll be very interested to hear the single.

have to admit thatis well said

I think ANATO had it's merits, but it was probably the beginning of the decline of BG. The music is too fluffy now and there's not enough power and energy in the songs. I guess you could say that about NiME as well, at least to some extent, but that one was brilliant because it managed to combine it's pretentiousness with awesome melodies and catchiness throughout.

As for A Twist in The Myth, I can hardly recall any songs or melodies, which is never a good sign if you've listened to an album more than a handful of times.


Hopefully the new album will be a lot better. It's sad seeing all those great power/heavy metal idols of my youth wither away into mediocrity.