Blind Guardian
Saturday, 23 August 2025
Tvornica kulture, Zagreb, Croatia
“Let’s sing the Bard’s song!”
After a long thirteen years (if internet sources are to be believed), the German masters of medieval folk melodies returned to Croatia, to Zagreb’s Tvornica kulture, and there was no way we were going to miss an event like this so close to home. Together with three other fired-up Blind Guardian fans, we first swung by another Tvornica on Savska 107 for a bite to eat (anyone who loves grilled food: it’s the “najbolji roštilj u gradu”), then headed straight to the venue. There we were met with scenes from another, happier era, when metal ruled the music world. A line of black-clad creatures snaked from the entrance all the way to the corner of the building and almost to the pub, all of them impatiently waiting for a magical evening.
Right on schedule, the bards took the stage at a packed Tvornica and opened the set somewhat unfortunately with The Ninth Wave, the opening track from their second-to-last studio album Beyond the Red Mirror, released a full ten years ago now. Why unfortunately? Because The Ninth Wave really isn’t the kind of track that sucks you into a show with its energy — at nine and a half minutes, it’s quite a drawn-out affair. On the left side of the stage where I was standing, the sound was also somehow murky and unbalanced. Hansi had promised an above-average long evening to make up for their long absence from Croatian stages, which only pushed the already fired-up crowd’s expectations higher. What mildly worried me was that the sound refused to improve until the fourth song, and three of those opening tracks were from the post-“golden era” period (the first six albums).
So I pushed through the sweaty crowd (it was hellishly hot and airless in the venue — even Hansi was complaining about it after the second song) and made my way to the sound engineer to see what the problem was. Lucky for me, the issue was my position as a listener, because the sound at the mixing desk was genuinely good. To my relief, Hansi’s promise of a special, enriched setlist (you can check it out here) also came true — from Time Stands Still onward we got another 14 songs (18 in total, which is genuinely above par for Blind Guardian), with 11 of them from the golden era. The punishing Violent Shadows (a personal favourite from the latest album The God Machine, which lends its name to this tour) announced a string of classics that wrapped up the main set with the immortal Lost in the Twilight Hall and (nearly) destroyed and exhausted both the band and a truly wild crowd. As I mentioned, the venue was packed to the last corner — even the balconies were buckling under the weight of fans. And the Story Ends, the closing track from perhaps the best-known Blind Guardian album, Imaginations from the Other Side (1995), absolutely melted me, while the devastating Into the Storm ripped through the venue like a shockwave. The crowd sang The Bard’s Song with real emotion, and the band was clearly loving every one of our vocal efforts.
I can’t help but mention the almost legendary lack of frontman charisma from the legendary vocalist Hansi Kürsch. His song introductions are comically dull (This one is dedicated to Mordred, so it’s called the Mordred’s Song …), and his stage presence is roughly equivalent to that of a bored priest at the pulpit of a half-empty church. That said, he more than compensates with his incredible voice, which he’s finally learned to pace properly in recent times. He gracefully hands off every chorus to the crowd, which in turn means he nails every stratospheric scream that defines the Blind Guardian sound. Excellent backing vocals came from Marcus (Siepen, rhythm guitarist) and the guest keyboardist (whose name I’ve forgotten). The keyboardist was the subject of the one genuinely successful Hansi quip of the night: that they drag him along purely so he can play the intro to the classic from their debut, Majesty — which was indeed one of the highlights of the evening.
The whole band was on fire — André’s (Olbrich, lead guitarist) lead lines and solos cut through the venue like a finely honed knife, Frederik (Ehmke, drummer) worked like an absolute beast, and the guest bassist, as is tradition in power metal bands, did his part mostly by swinging his hair around.
For the encore, pressured by the female fan in front of me — who, with every arm raise, wafted the scent of instant noodles into my face and has forever ruined them for me — I relocated to the bar to the right of the stage, which was pleasantly air-conditioned. I’m not entirely sure why they opened the encore with the drawn-out and uninteresting Sacred Worlds from the drawn-out and uninteresting album At the Edge of Time (2010), but Valhalla — with its obligatory crowd-chorus repetition until everyone’s lungs give out — and Mirror Mirror both absolutely nailed their job. A top-tier finale to a top-tier concert.
Before the show, I was mildly worried about what to write in this review, since it was already the third date from this current tour I’d attended. But the enriched setlist settled it — in Vienna (review here) we got an inexplicably shortened one, and at the Rock Out festival in Augsburg (review here) a standard festival setlist. What Nightfall in Middle-Earth (1998) and Imaginations from the Other Side (1995) mean in the band’s catalogue is revealed by the fact that, nearly thirty years on, seven songs from them are still in the setlist. Personally, I always miss more material from the first four albums, but a ratio of 2/3 golden era to 1/3 newer tracks makes for a stellar live experience.
Kudos to the Zagreb crowd for their intense participation and for going with the classic “We want more!” chant before the encore (see the DragonForce concert review here).
The journey home took a little longer than expected — the night has its own power. But in the end, we all made it back alive and in one piece.
Text and photos: Igorac
P.S. Due to unexpected changes in the Rockline crew lineup, the photos are a bit hit-or-miss — taken from a distance and not exactly top quality. Sorry about that.
