Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Blind Guardian
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: 2006
Running time: 51.31
Rating: 3.5/5
Blind Guardian! Few bands in power metal today can boast the kind of originality and inventiveness that Blind Guardian can. Their albums are always a chapter of their own, and for years now each new release has landed in the narrow circle of favorites for “album of the year”. And the new album is not much different.
Four years have passed since “A Night At The Opera” (2002). That one was by far the most experimental Blind Guardian album of their career, and it felt like the guys had pushed their experimental side, that splendid fusion of symphonic bombast and power metal punch, to its peak, or to the end of the developmental branch of their signature style. “A Night At The Opera” was packed with intricately built songs, soaked in choir arrangements and huge orchestrations, and it’s And Then There Was Silence that rounds off this great opus in the band’s career as its creative peak (at that point).
Four years later Blind Guardian are back with a new album that, as its title already tells you, brings a twist – a dance, slyly wrapped in a new myth, a myth that this time the album doesn’t know as a concept. Well, okay, each song can be a myth on its own: according to Hansi, for example, Lionheart isn’t about Richard the Lionheart but about King Ulysses and his failed return from the kingdom of the dead – Hades – leaning on the work of Dante Alighieri in the verses. Despite the great fairy-tale cover art, which makes you feel the moment you see it that a new mysterious story is hiding behind it, this time the album simply carries no concept.
“A Twist In The Myth” is a relaxed album for Blind Guardian. Once they were taken under the wing of the German label Nuclear Blast, one of the biggest metal labels in Europe, which looks after the survival and recognition of heavy metal, the guys clearly became aware of their roots and returned to a simplified, more direct and immediate musical direction. Don’t worry, fans, you’ll be thrilled with the album all over again. It has the epic bombast we’re used to from the band, the recognizable guitar multi-harmonies that saturate the punchy riffs, complex transitional passages, riffs backed by aggressive torpedoing from the double bass pedal, with which Thomen Stauch’s successor, the newly minted band member Fredrik Ehmke, passed his trial exam with flying colors! The drumming has kept its glow and magic even after Stauch’s departure, and Ehmke is a versatile and explosive drummer who doesn’t imitate his predecessor and merely fill his spot, but brings an approach all his own, which is, for Blind Guardian, extremely welcome. Hansi Kürsch’s vocals have grown even more. The man sings better year after year, and on “A Twist In The Myth” he truly takes care of the melodies of his parts in every vocal register, taking them a step further compared to “A Night At The Opera”. “A Twist In The Myth” is in all likelihood the hardest album of the band’s career. It gained that hardness precisely by simplifying the structure of the arrangements in the compositions themselves, compared to the previous album. If “A Night At The Opera” hadn’t come before it, which with its exploratory freshness unexpectedly pushed the boundaries even further and unveiled new metal musical horizons, and in doing so raised the criteria and expectations for the new Blind Guardian album critically high, this review would also have been far more logical and trivial.
The opening of the new album already surprises with a classic thrash riff, which at first glance brings you closer to the likes of Nevermore, but the first guitar riff is the only culprit, because everything else is dressed in the typical Blind Guardian garb with a catchy, hymn-like chorus that dominates the song and steals all the attention from that “thrash” trick. The opener Overland gives a wink to Bright Eyes from “Imaginatons From The Other Side” (1995), but watch out! Don’t expect “Imaginations…” even in your dreams, because right after it Turn The Page blows the listener toward something closer to “Nightfall In The Middle Earth” (the riff and the guitar harmony laid over it). So further on there are a few references to both albums, especially in Straight Through The Mirror, the probable epic peak of the whole record. So the new album could be placed somewhere between the two, or even as the album that’s practically the most logical successor to “Nightfall In The Middle Earth” (1998). And so you arrive at the conclusion that Blind Guardian offer nothing earth-shatteringly new, and stick to the tried-and-true formula for most of the album. They stay true to their trademarks and do exactly what they do best. So, a relaxed album, but one that once again delivers outstanding quality and consistency, like every one of their albums, if I may say so, from “Imaginations…” onward.
The track Fly is one of the most impressive compositions on the new album. This is the song where Blind Guaridan jumped away from their standard guidelines and actually offered something creatively fresh again. This time they built genuine East Asian motifs into the sharpness of their riff form, and with this song you can actually fly, especially after that one-of-a-kind “Asian” chorus. It’s a song where the moods flow unexpectedly and smoothly through the pre-chorus, the transition into the chorus, and the chorus itself. It’s a new, uniquely brilliant mix from the band, with a real dramatic touch. Carry The Blesssed Home brings another mood switch: the song opens with a motif that vaguely, suspiciously recalls Lucy In The Sky (The Beatles), and then tips over into a proper Celtic mid-tempo power-metal hymn, a Spartan chant. Another Stranger Me is the point on the album where the new Blind Guardian went furthest in their simplifying, and it surprises with a modern riff, uncharacteristic for power metal, which is also produced through a deliberately smudged guitar distortion to get closer to more current-sounding commercial tones. Somehow Kürsch’s vocals don’t belong in this kind of experiment, and I hope Blind Guardian steer clear of them as much as possible in the future. It’s a minor thing on the album that doesn’t bother, it just gives a slight warning. After it, the whole album grows dramatic and epic in mood, just the way the band’s fans could only wish, through the already mentioned wound-up Straight Through The Mirror and Lionheart! After them comes the gentle, pastoral Skalds And Shadows, yet another obvious successor to The Bard’s Song. The mountains shake again with The Edge, which calls to a real battle! Of all the songs on the new album, it’s the one that ties in most closely in form with the finest compositions from “A Night At The Opera”, with at times venomous riffing that goes wild in proper “palm muted shredding”, which Hansi probably brought over from the Demons And Wizards project, where he worked with the well-known creator of this kind of riffs, Jon Schaffer (Iced Earth – the American approach, after all). The Edge is the explosive peak of the record and power metal in its most brilliant form – power metal under Blind Guardian’s own baton. Another unexpected surprise on the album comes right at the end with the closing The New Order, which has a “doom – Black Sabbath-style riff” woven into it. It’s a mid-tempo song through and through. And it’s the chorus that pulls the song back out of the doom riff curves, with that characteristic “Guardian-style” epic ultra-melodicness. The track is graced by an extraordinary sense of tastefully combining what is really incompatible. A half-step riff and melody. And Blind Guardian can’t deny themselves here either. The end of the album thus brings an excellent twist in atmosphere, a surge of freshness and dynamics, and certainly a surge of theatrically dramatic mood, up to its peak. The limited “digipack” edition of the album also adds a version of Fly called Dead Sound Of Misery, played in a higher metal gear than Fly.
With the new album Blind Guardian remain untouchable once again. The band’s fans will be thrilled. Apparently we didn’t get the upgrade of “A Night At The Opera” and a new progressive, exploratory album, but what “A Twist In The Myth” brings is simply yet another perfect album, full of the band’s uniqueness and musical perfection. It brings a surge of punch and directness at the expense of simplified arrangement structures, and that is most likely why it feels like we’re looking at the hardest Blind Guardian record of their career so far. This is an album best enjoyed while playing with lead Greek hoplites and Persians at 1:48 scale, because “A Twist In The Myth” is a new adventure full of convincing warrior-like hymnic power and pompous bombast, which Blind Guardian know how to conjure up masterfully, only this time with a bit of restraint.
Line-up
Hansi Kürsch – vocals
André Olbrich – guitar
Marcus Siepen – guitar
Frederik Ehmke – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Oliver Holzwarth – bass guitar
Matthias Wiesner – keyboards
Production
Charlie Bauerfeind
Tracklist
01. This Will Never End (05:07)
02. Otherland (05:16)
03. Turn The Page (04:18)
04. Fly (05:46)
05. Carry The Blessed Home (04:05)
06. Another Stranger Me (04:37)
07. Straight Through The Mirror (05:50)
08. Lionheart (04:17)
09. Skalds And Shadows (03:14)
10. The Edge (04:29)
11. The New Order (04:54)
12. Dead Sound Of Misery (05:20)*
*…bonus track
