Power Metal Troubadours Live Up to Their Name Once Again as One of the Best Metal Bands Out There Right Now! (2011)

Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Venue: Boogaloo / Zagreb / Croatia
Concert date: 28.04.2011
Attendance: 800
Ticket price: 27.49€

German power metal giants Blind Guardian, from the small northern German town of Krefeld, show not the slightest sign of fading or running out of steam even after a quarter century in the game. Last year they dropped their ninth studio album, At the Edge of Time, and with it, in my opinion, hit the peak of their symphonic metal output, which they hinted at on Nightfall and Middle-Earth and perfected on A Night At the Opera. They’re presenting the grandly, pompously conceived album on the current Sacred Worlds and Songs Divine 2011 tour, which rolled into its second leg this spring. After last October’s Vienna show, the Blind Guardian crew stopped once again close to home, at Zagreb’s Boogaloo, and the magnetic pull of Blind Guardian is simply too strong to skip one of the most distinctive and unique metal bands around right now.

This time there was no need to suffer through support acts like Steelwing, who tortured eardrums last year. The only openers were local boys, technical death metallers Infernal Tenebra, whom we sadly skipped because of complications at the border (smuggling illegals) and the tempting, just-cold-enough, cheap beer near the hall.

Blind Guardian played Croatia for the first time in their long career, and despite my – wrong – guess that there’d be maybe 500, 600 people inside, I walked into Boogaloo and straight into a wall of people that filled the hall to the last corner. From the opening track Sacred Worlds, the jam-packed Boogaloo greeted the Germans with the kind of atmosphere and energy we rarely get at gigs – and that roaring support, which nearly took the roof off, didn’t let up until the very last note of the closing Mirror Mirror. Blind Guardian play exclusively to completely sold-out rooms on this tour, and tonight was no different, as they greeted the Zagreb crowd for the first time ever with the epic power of the new album’s opening track, Sacred Worlds. Goosebumps crawl all over your body as the bombastic symphonic intro booms out of the speakers and the band members take their places. And you can truly feel from the stage that the lineup has been practically unchanged since the beginning, apart from the drum seat, where Frederik Ehmke replaced Thomen Stauch in 2005, because every single person up there radiates a very special positive energy, which Blind Guardian have been brilliantly translating into musical language for so many years. Your eye instantly lands on the charismatic frontman, the irreplaceable Hansi Kürsch, who with his brilliant banter (luckily the show wasn’t in a German-speaking country this time, so we got every address served up in fluent English) stitched the silence between songs together perfectly and raised the hairs on our necks all night with his mighty, soaring vocals. Hansi is in truly top vocal form – the raspy voice that plagued him a year or two ago is gone, the clarity of his voice is perfect, and he doesn’t even drink throat-soothing potions during the instrumental parts anymore, so he stays on stage the whole time. He gets some noticeable, audible help from the mixing desk only on the very highest parts, where his vocals are boosted into the top registers, but otherwise Hansi delivers nothing less than the best possible performance from the first minute to the last. And when four backing vocalists and a thousand-headed crowd – who take over every single line straight out of Hansi’s mouth – join him Queen-style in those phenomenal, unforgettable choruses, the result can only be that one-of-a-kind Blind Guardian magic. Anyone who’s seen at least one show by the German band knows exactly what I’m talking about! But that explosive vocal playfulness would be nothing without the outstanding, German-precise instrumental five-piece behind it, who kept building that incredible atmosphere and delivering the epic power, led by guitar wizard Andre Olbrich. Andre, in a duet with Marcus Siepen, took care of the unmistakable Guardian tremolo sawing, and on his own showed off his spectacular soloing skills, which he tosses off like it’s nothing, even if a second earlier he was busy with the pompous backing vocals. Ehmke’s cannon-fire drumming stuck out of the mix quite a bit at first and swallowed the other instruments, but luckily it settled down, leaving more room for the atmospheric keyboard parts from under the fingers of Mi Schüren, whose pounding on the keys is always a joy to watch. In a whirlwind like that, you suddenly find yourself in the encore way too fast, which Blind Guardian have been kicking off on this tour with the incredible, orientally flavored (which is something completely new even for the Blinds!) epic Wheel of Time, before moving on to the ever-magical bardic singalong, The Bard’s Song – In the Forest. And it doesn’t matter one bit how many times you’ve already lived through the band and crowd singing together in this acoustic part – every single time it gives you goosebumps when this part of the show rolls around. Blind Guardian pulled off a big surprise by continuing the “bard saga” and playing its second part too, The Bard’s Song – The Hobbit, which is about Hansi’s “favorite heroes”. The classic ending was, as always, the closing track Mirror Mirror. With a few rare exceptions – one of them the excellent speed metal banger Traveler in Time – Blind Guardian offered a pretty predictable song selection this time, but given that it was their first visit to our neighbors, that was to be expected.

Blind Guardian once again showed and confirmed that even after twenty-five years in the game, Blind Guardian are in top form! The magic is still alive and kicking, you walk out of a show by the Germans with a warm feeling in your heart every single time, and I’d even dare to say that Blind Guardian are probably the only band right now that’s capable of and worthy of taking up the torch when giants of the caliber of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden head off into retirement. With the help of a fantastic Croatian crowd, Blind Guardian played yet another in a string of unforgettable shows, but I selfishly still wish we get to see them back here soon for a proper indoor headliner gig.

photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

This report was produced in collaboration with the show RockLine and Rock Hard Slovenija. 

Setlist

1. Sacred Worlds 2. Welcome To Dying 3. Nightfall 4. Fly 5. Time Stands Still 6. Turn The Page 7. Lord Of The Rings 8. Tanelorn 9. Traveler In Time 10. Valhalla 11. Imaginations From The Other Side —encore— 12. Wheel Of Time 13. The Bard’s Song – In The Forest 14. The Bard’s Song – The Hobbit 15. Mirror Mirror

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