867. Rhapsody / Legendary Tales. 1997. 3/5

I guess I was always going to stumble across Rhapsody sooner or later given my collection of albums from bands from the power metal genre, and my endless search for another band to equal the brilliance of Gamma Ray and Helloween. Obviously that is highly unlikely ever to occur. The final piece of the puzzle into searching out albums from Rhapsody was Alex Holzwarth's participation as drummer on the first two Metal Opera albums by Avantasia. It pushed me to listen to their music (even though he does not appear on this album or the one following), and I chose to go right back to the beginning, here with Legendary Tales.

The start of the album is superb, combining the best of bands that came before them and also those that obviously used them as inspiration in the future, such as Stratovarius and Sonata Arctica. The instrumental opening of "Ira Tenax" ("Tenacious Rage") crashes into the keyboards and drum filled epic of "Warrior Of Ice", which rushes along at the speed you expect from European power metal from this era. This is followed by "Rage of the Winter", probably my favourite song on the album, which comes closest to incorporating and re-imagining all of the best parts of this style of music without any compromises.
Those compromises come in "Forest of Unicorns", which I'm afraid is probably just a little bit too much to take. I'm happy to listen to songs in a similar vein, such as Blind Guardian's "The Bard Song" for instance, and while this obviously fits into the band and album's scenario of the storyline, when listening to the album it is so far removed from the style of music that the majority of this album has that it just makes it almost ridiculous. Actually, strike that. Not almost, but actually ridiculous. Oh well, when you take the plunge into this style of music you are always going to come across material that has you questioning what direction you are moving in. "Virgin Skies" on the other hand is receivable given it is just an instrumental interlude between songs rather than an actual track.
"Flames of Revenge" gets the album moving once again, eradicating the doldrums to return to the faster paced music of the opening tracks. This is held up for the most part by the remaining songs on the album, "Land of Immortals", "Echoes of Tragedy", "Lord of the Thunder" and "Legendary Tales".

While the start of the album really dragged me in on first listen, and for the most part still does when I first put the album on, it does probably tend to get a bit similar and repetitive as you work your way through the album. While that doesn't degrade the album as such, it does stifle the ability to completely immerse yourself in it on a regular basis.

Rating:  Tears of winter falling on me freezing my dark side.  3/5