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After what I consider to be two masterpieces of metal, Blind Guardian released A Night at the Opera. I was very exited to get my hands on it, since the Germans are among my favourite bands. But I soon realised that this new effort was no where near Nightfall in Middle Earth and Imaginations from the Other Side. A Night at the Opera is not what I would call a bad album, but compared to the class of the band, it is disappointing. It seems overworked and it lacks power. It cannot be a coincidence that the album title has already been used by a band like Queen.
The reason why I choose to compare this album with Queen is, apart from its title, the musical styled metal and the theatrical atmosphere that surrounds the record. It seems, as stated by many metal fans, that Blind Guardian are forgetting to play metal. Instead they are going more and more in the direction of progressive rock. Not unlike Queen, but still it has to be said, of course much more metal than the average work by Freddie Mercury and Co. It is not a road well suited for Blind Guardian’s music, which seems to drown in all the effects. Through the wish of being much more than just a metal band the guys in Blind Guardian take a step closer to losing the meaning of themselves as a band whatsoever.
The reason why I am so harsh against this album is not that there are no good songs on it. Especially The Soulforged and Age of False Innocence are great tunes, and all over the album there are good parts and promising build-ups. But the listener longing for genuine metal is let down by the way too often appearing prog. rock elements and the weak production. Of course you should not be surprised that there are lots of time changes and strange melodies in the music. That is after all what makes the two previous albums the supreme power metal masterpieces that they are. But both on Nightfall in Middle Earth and Imaginations from the Other Side, it is the power that is the base for all the great musicianship. On this album the power is almost gone, and without power the great musicianship is not that great really….
Once again it seems that Hansi and André have a hard time constructing melodies with natural flow and text with even the slightest rhymes. That has been the case since their much more thrashier first couple of albums and also up through the 90’s. It is easy to see this album as a natural step in the direction they have been following almost album by album: softer and softer and slower and slower. While I think they created the best balance between power and melody in the middle of their career, they now seem to have gone over the edge. Their great ideas and their skills are simply not presented at their best in this soundscape of huge choirs, bells and keyboards. Blind Guardian are not lost for the world of metal, but they are exploring the limits of the realm. They have been among the kings, as it can be heard on the great live album simply called Live, and they can be again. But they have to do some hard work to reclaim the throne.
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