1197. Blind Guardian / Night-Fall in Middle Earth. 1998. 4.5/5

Blind Guardian’s profile as a band had been steadily building over the years, and along that path was also a redefining of their sound and the way they were writing and recording their albums. Their early albums were definitely heralded by a speed metal sound that came from their love of the band Helloween, and in many ways were certainly inspired by them. Over the course of their previous three albums, the band had begun to incorporate a lot more changes in their output, beginning to forgo the out and out speed and writing more complicated pieces, also injecting other instruments and styles within their basic framework. In particular, they had begun to sew in influences such as a folk rock sound into pieces of both the “Somewhere Far Beyond” album (which has an episode dedicated to it back in Season 3 of this podcast) and “Imaginations from the Other Side” album, bringing acoustic instruments and clear voiced vocals to include in songs that were of a ballad variety, but without the lyrical content that would normally signify such a connotation. Indeed, Hansi Kursch, lead singer and lyric writer, continued to delve deeply into mysticism and novels for his inspiration, which allowed Blind Guardian to avoid any comparisons with ballad-seeking bands for the sake of commercialisation.
For the new album, the band pushed things to a new limit. What they decided on was a concept album, based on the J.R.R Tolkien novel “The Silmarillion”, which was posthumously put together by his son Christopher. Piecing together the story through both song and short spoken words interludes between the tracks, it is a labour of love that once again stretched the way the band composed their music. There is a defined and conscious effort to have the music on the album try to have you feeling as though the events are set in that Middle-Earth setting, with the use of folk instruments including flutes and violin, along with heavily chorused vocals, mixed with the band’s usual hard riffing and fast paced playing, creating the atmosphere that gives the impression that you have been transported to this age, but without losing the integrity that Blind Guardian had built up over a decade in the business.

Now the thing to take into consideration from the very start is that this album is telling a story, but the album can work with or without that when you are listening to it. Indeed I don’t take that into account whenever I listen to this album. There are many people out there who are annoyed about the spoken word pieces that come between most of the tracks that help to gel the story together. And that is fine. Most probably, if it had been in the age of cassettes when this was released (and yes scarily that appears to be returning in some form) I would probably have gone through when recording it for the car and cut out all of those interludes and just left the main tracks. Skipping them when listening to this on CD does make a difference but not in all places. It is just easier to accept it as it is – a performance piece.
So as an album itself, it has many rises and falls, peaks and troughs, depending on where the story is going at that point of the album. And the album has songs that are standouts, ones that lift the album each time they come around. And as already mentioned, the morphing of the band’s sound from its original roots to a more orchestral style involving layered vocals and more interesting instruments filling out the songs makes this an album that is the fulcrum of the maturing of Blind Guardian.
In regards to what would be regarded as the ‘songs’ of the album, it opens in style with “Into the Storm” in a classic Blind Guardian fury of riff and vocals. This is followed by “Nightfall”, one of the more recent age styled song, showing a different side to the band than they had previously done a lot of. "The Curse of Fëanor" again channels the roots of the band, showcasing in the main the amazing ability Hansi Kursh has of going for the high range and pitch in his singing to the calm and melodic as well, helped along with great riffing from André Olbrich and Marcus Siepen and the incomparable drumming of Thomas Stauch. “Blood Tears” is a more reflective and powerful song, which is followed by one of the band’s masterpieces, “Mirror, Mirror”, which 25 years later is still as awesome as it was on its release.
"Noldor (Dead Winter Reigns)" is of the then modern age of Blind Guardian, with lots of choral vocals mixing with an atmospheric background. It is followed by the return of the old with a scintillating performance in “Time Stands Still (at the Iron Hill)”, with Hansi’s vocal range tested throughout and some great guitar riffs flying in throughout. This still finds its way into live set lists and is a crowd favourite. “Thorn”s stirring vocal soaring from Hansi is its starring role, his vocals here are incredible. “When Sorrow Sang” is another beauty, rampaging through the back half of the storyline like the Blind Guardian of old, while “A Dark Passage” brings the album and the story to a close in a pleasing fashion, being both anthemic and reflective in the same breath.

I don’t mind admitting that my favourite era of Blind Guardian is the early albums, where they barely had time to draw breath given the pace they played the songs. But I do enjoy almost all of their albums throughout their career... probably just three where I have a real problem with the content. And this isn’t one of those.
I didn’t come across Blind Guardian until their next album, “A Night at the Opera”, one that, for me at least, went a bit too far in the direction they had been striving for. And so it was not until a couple of years later when I began to really discover the European power metal bands such as Stratovarius, Sonata Arctica, Primal Fear and the like, that I gave Blind Guardian a second chance. And this album was one of the two I discovered, along with “Tales from the Twilight World”. And once I was invested in Hansi’s amazing vocals, and the wonderful guitaring and drums through the track list, I was hooked.
Like I have already mentioned when it comes to “Nightfall in Middle-Earth", I have never invested myself in the story, and I too was often annoyed by the interludes between songs. While I know they served their purpose of the concept album, to me it felt as though they were blocking the flow of the album, managing to make it stall along the way. Over the years that has become less of a problem for me, but I understand when others suggest it to still be the case.
There are some great songs here, some of the band’s best. When they toured Australia for the first time and played in Sydney, they were forced to start late because of sound problems, which meant the show ran late, and because of the venue’s noise restrictions, they couldn’t perform the encore. That encore, as it has been for 20+ years, was “Mirror, Mirror”, a song that everyone in attendance of course had been gunning to hear live for 20 years. The scene was one of massive disappointment. Hansi apologised profusely, and promised that when they NEXT toured and played Sydney, they would play “Mirror, Mirror” twice. Four years later... it didn’t happen... but to hear it once live was still reward enough.