Search - Blind Guardian :: Night at the Opera

Finally, the greatest band out there is back!! :-)

Gene Beck | Louisville, KY, USA | 03/20/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Oh dear Lord, it's finally here. The most beautiful album released by anyone in years upon years, if ever. The wait has been rediculous, but as with most good things, it was worth it. The wait for this album was also with good reason. Just listen to the production, the choirs, and insane amount of guitar layering and complicated songwriting. Sure, this is common with Blind Guardian, but they've finally out-done themselves, I believe. Read on to see one forever-committed fan's analysis of this masterpiece of operatic metal brilliance.Let's start with the song by song review now...Precious Jerusalem - Heavy, fast, and very cool vocals. A departure for Guardian with the more eastern feel, but an incredible way to start the album, especially with the very fast rhythm and singing about 50 seconds in. Wow. (10/10)Battlefield - A great clean intro to this gets you anticipating the chaos that awaits. Great bass drumming throughout, good guitar leads, and a bridge and faster part that make you just want to, I don't know, go crazy. Great song. (10/10)Under The Ice - Trippy intro, again with an eastern feel throughout the song. Back to the good old dark lyrical style. Great dark lyrics, even. A very singable chorus (if you can hit those higher notes). Great song, very emotional. (10/10)Sadly Sings Destiny - Incredibly cool and bizarre intro to this one. The most upbeat track on the album, but with aggressive singing throughout the verses. It's a departure, and one of the best songs on the album. The lyrics are obscurely uplifting, and make you feel good. It's a fun song, with great instrumentals. Definitely a classic. (11/10)The Maiden and the Minstrel Knight - Much slower than the rest so far, and very emotional. Just to keep you on your toes, it kicks in hard at about 2 minutes, still keeping that same heartfelt emotion. Great use of orchestration, choir vocals, and a great guitar solo. Very singable in the car, too. :-) (10/10)Wait For An Answer - The most uplifting song on the album lyrically. Trashes on "spreading disease", "Ignorance", and "Hate like a fowl cancer." It can be interpreted in many ways, including the tragedy of 9/11, or as loosely as racism. Musically it's very good and very powerful, VERY powerful. Has a killer groove to it, too. It's only problem is that it's somehow not very catchy at first, but it really grows on you, and with great (and I mean GREAT) instrumentals. (10/10)The Soulforged - Based on Dragonlance, this one is heavy, fast, and upbeat. Incredibly catchy chorus, and I mean incredibly catchy. Again, great guitar work, as Andre and Marcus(Magnus?) are so consistent with. Another of my favorites, and that's all there is to it. (11/10)Age Of False Innocence - The opening piano reminds you a bit of "The Eldar" from Nightfall In Middle-Earth with added orchestration, but it gets a lot more aggressive, a lot faster. Another emotional one, but heavier than "The Maiden and the Minstrel Knight." It's really a great song with more clean guitar than the rest of the CD, along with great leads. Andre Olbrich never ceases to amaze me with his unique solos. He uses scales like I've never seen, and they're amazing. (10/10)Punishment Divine - Awesome. Incredible lyrics, great vocal lines, blistering leads, and what I believe to be the heaviest song on the album. This one gets you going in ways you have to hear to believe, and it's an unstoppable juggernaut reminiscent of tracks like "I'm Alive" and "Another Holy War" from Imagination From The Other Side. Very cool song. (10/10)And Then There Was Silence - Now this one is interesting. It's the longest song that Blind Guardian have ever done, and it's musically probably also the best. It's over 14 minutes long, and has probably some of the catchiest choruses and most powerful verses on the album, but it takes quite a few listens to appreciate all of them to the fullest. This one also boasts the least amount of lead guitar on the cd. Almost all the power is in the rhythm guitars, Hansi's incredible vocals, and and great orchestration. The climax of the whole thing comes at around the 9-10 minute mark, and it kind of just winds down from there. One of the greatest epics written, save perhaps Maiden's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Absolutely incredible, but we're not through yet.... (11/10)Mies Del Dolor - ... for there's still one more! The Spanish version of Harvest Of Sorrow(which is found in English on the And Then There Was Silence single), finishes off this musical journey in a very mellow and beautiful way. Marcus' accoustics are great, and Hansi's Spanish vocals sound just a good. Truly my favorite album in my collection of over 300. It beat Gamma Ray's No World Order and their own N.I.M.E. and I.F.T.O.S. into the ground to take the top spot in my mind, and it'll be a few weeks probably before I listen to anything else. So, get out your card or your keys and get this album!!!! Cheers!"

New ground broken, but at some expense to poetic feel

George L. Chadderdon III | Bloomington, IN, USA | 06/16/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"As a 30-something fan of 70's and 80's heavy metal greats such as Black Sabbath, Rush, Iron Maiden, (early) Metallica, and (early) Queensryche, my introduction to Blind Guardian was "Nightfall in Middle Earth" about five years ago, and I felt like I had found a new friend, so to speak. Blind Guardian can be described sonically as a cross between Metallica, Queen, and Iron Maiden, but with a special taste for Arthurian and Tolkienesque themes (with, I suspect, some thinly-hidden allusions to the evils of the Nazi era of Germany), and some of their most stirring pieces have an actual bardic minstrel feel to them that might not be out of place in Renaissance music. They are a band for fantasy-lovers who like aggressive, pounding heavy music, but who appreciate a rousing melody and layered vocal arrangements.



Being really taken with NIME as I was, I had mixed feelings about "A Night at the Opera". Generally speaking, the massive chorale layers are there still, as well as the cataclysmic drumming and strident, proud Brian-Mayish layered guitar-work. The fantasy themes with the veiled references to modern issues remain. (Some of the not-quite polished English remains: they've gotten a lot better over the years, but they could still use the input from a native-English speaker in crafting their lyrics.) But this album seems to have lost some of the bardic feel of their previous releases, with some exceptions granted for specific tracks. They are experimenting more in this album, and it shows in the complexity of the layering and the epic length work "And Then There Was Silence" As other reviewers have noted, however, something of the intimacy and emotion was lost. I am anxious to see if, in their next album, they are better able to integrate their progressive experimentation and the more bardic, poetic elements that shined more on NIME. Now a summary of tracks with an interpretive gloss on lyrics.



PRECIOUS JERUSALEM

A thundering and rousing introduction to the album. The lyrics seem to take the perspective of a Hebrew prophet or Messiah bewailing the state of Israel and the state of that divided city in the Holy Land.



BATTLEFIELD

A commentary on how futile wars get waged when people put a leader on a pedestal and follow them blindly into battle. Strong and stirring music, though more reflective than the first track.



UNDER THE ICE

It's often not good to be the bearer of bad news because you can be made a scapegoat like poor Cassandra (the Trojan prophetess who prophesied the doom of Troy). "You're the artificial enemy, an illusion we all need for our sake" seems to me to be a reference to Nazi persecution of the Jews. The music has a slightly Middle-Eastern feel and the lyrics are suitably grim and menacing.



SADLY SINGS DESTINY

A song about Jesus from the guilt-ridden perspective of Judas. Not a high point for me on the album, but not a bad track.



THE MAIDEN AND THE MINSTREL KNIGHT

This track seems like a missed opportunity to really display the band's minstrelsy. The protagonists they're referring to may be Sir Tristram and Iseult (who in the Arthurian legends had the unpleasant misfortune of being married to the cowardly, but vicious King Marke of Cornwall). The idea of the piece is touching and gallant: the lady waiting to be delivered from bondage by the minstrel knight and the knight waiting for the right opportunity to deliver her. I think the piece would have benefited by being made more acoustical and Renaissancy with less of the thundering guitars and drums. The quiet, reverent mood established early in the piece is ruined by the metallic treatment in the rest of the song. As the piece is in the middle of the album, it would have provided a nice acoustic interlude, a pause in the action before the aggressiveness of the rest of the album.



WAIT FOR AN ANSWER

The lyrics seem to be an exhortation to keep one's eyes open and think for oneself and not place too much faith in authority to provide an answer. The music here is bright and upbeat, being in a major key.



THE SOULFORGED

A song about the troubled and complex figure of the wizard Raistlin from the Dragonlance series, sung from his perspective. This is one of my favorite tracks of the album, one of the most bardic and epic tracks with a driving and melodic riff, and one which I think capture Blind Guardian's artistic essence.



AGE OF FALSE INNOCENCE

I wonder if this is a first: a heavy metal song about Galileo! Galileo is here lamenting the recantation the Church has forced out of him about the earth's travel around the sun rather than vice versa. (He even compares himself with Judas for making the recantation, though maybe the apostle Peter would have been a better comparison.) Musically, not my favorite track, but I salute them for their subject matter.



PUNISHMENT DIVINE

I believe this song is about the late nineteenth century philosopher Nietzsche who played quite a part in attacking Christian beliefs, while lamenting the chaos his view might imply for the foundations of morality. The piece (told from his perspective) suggests that Nietzsche deep down wished he could be a religious believer because of the difficulty accepting the conclusions his own views implied. The music is decent enough, but it is overshadowed by the mammoth epic that is...



AND THEN THERE WAS SILENCE

This was intended to be the high point of the album, and I think it succeeds. It is a heavy metal epic retelling of the mythical events leading up to the Trojan War: the amorous abduction of Greek Helen by Trojan Paris, and the revenge that would be visited on them by the Greeks. Even though the events are all before the war, you can almost see the city burning at the end of the piece and smell the smoke. There are some quirky transitions between sections in the piece, but some memorable moments that do them proud musically: for example the section "misty tales and poems lost... all the bliss and beauty will be gone."



MIES DEL DOLOR

This is a Spanish translation of an earlier song "Harvest of Sorrow" (which I haven't heard in English yet). It is more acoustical and quiet in texture and a charming ending to the album. I only wish they might have had more of a Spanish flavor to the music itself to match.



This is an album worth having, though I would recommend people start with "Nightfall in Middle Earth" or "Somewhere Far Beyond" if they're not familiar with Blind Guardian. I am encouraged by their progressiveness in this album, but I hope they are able to keep the bardic touch that is their trademark and I think a part of their own deep inspiration in future releases. I'm also hoping they have a bit more quiet, acoustical pieces in their future albums to provide contrast to the heavy pieces. (This was a nice feature of NIME.) I anxiously await their next album."

It might be years before the full impact is felt

Thomas R. Brown | Greenfield, Wisconsin United States | 01/11/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"German Gods Blind Guardian spend a year composing their latest, "Night at the Opera," and come out with an astoundingly massive sound that demands our full attention.I've got to be honest: I'm still trying to wrap my mind fully around this one. Most bands de-volve into ever increasing spirals of simplicity and commerciality over the years. Blind Guardian is doing the exact opposite. Every iteration of the band grows more and more progressive. My prog-fan friends are literally freaking out over this band: they aren't doing what they're supposed to! It's getting even more brave, even more groundbreaking!And, in the case of "Night at the Opera," much more huge. In fact, during the hallowed "Tales from the Twilight World" years, when BG's impact was first being felt in Europe and Japan (and for the lucky few of us here in the US), this band was clearly a speed metal band with a twist: their sound was actually UPLIFTING at times, an anomaly in the genre (Yahoo still has them classified as "Death Metal"--incredibly insulting). With their latest release, Blind Guardian have fully incorporated their ultra-speed roots with totally new styles. Truly, Blind Guardian has the most significantly unique sound of any band in the last 10 years. From mere speed metal with a gimmick, BG has become the most universally un-definable heavy act I've ever seen. Yes, they're Power Metal, but... Yes, it's Progressive, but... Yes, it's got some Queen-esque overtones at times, but...You can't pin them down, other than to say, "It's really heavy, and really intense." And maybe that's the way it should be."Night at the Opera" must be experienced with a clear head and a sound mind. Songs like "Punishment Divine," "Under the Ice," and "The Soulforged" will undoubtedly satisfy even the heaviest appetite. "Sadly Sings Destiny," with it's epic chorus, will quench the listener's thirst for a hook. But even these massive tracks have elements rarely seen in heavy music. Unexpected breaks abound, even in the most vanilla moments of the album.Other songs, such as "Age of False Innocence" and the incredibly diverse "Wait for an Answer," take the band in directions fans might not be comfortable with. But that's exactly what makes this album undeniably relevant. The band is moving, working, evolving. After many, many years--it's still happening with these guys. Their 7th album, unlike many other bands, reveals a unit vital with energy, fertile with creativity, and ripe with talent. Would fans accept anything less from BG? Not a chance.We've all watched with amazement as a little-known post-Maiden speed metal band called "Blind Guardian" grew into a true power in modern heavy music. Now nothing can deny them their just rewards. They have become legends in their own time, in spite of the mainstream's ignorance. Their latest tour, which includes dates in the US for the first time, proves as much. Sold out shows in Atlanta and Chicago (both of which I was priviledged enough to attend) became unforgettable events we lucky few will cherish for a lifetime.Buy this album. Not for quick thrills, for there are none. But for lasting, deeply fulfilling, musical satisfaction."