Blind Guardian
A Twist In The Myth

THE REVIEW

'A Twist In The Myth'. Today, Blind Guardian are this.

The years of Imaginations and Nightfall are now gone. But this is hardly surprising, the Bards have been on the Metal scene for a long time, and an artistic decline is physiological for every artist, and Blind Guardian are aware of it. So the question now is, "How are Hansi and the others aging?" In a dignified way or not? Let's try to find out.

After the departure of the glorious Stauch and the arrival of Ehmke behind the drums, we all feared the worst. We feared that the Blind would no longer be what they once were. "You don't change a winning team," they say in these cases. The problem is that with ANATO, the Bards had not exactly won. The album had excellent potential, but a production not up to par that undermined its final quality. Perhaps not all bad things come to harm after all. With this ATITM, our try for a coup. A coup that, I warn you right away, did not succeed. Abandoned the pompous, baroque, and orchestral style of the previous record, this new release focuses on immediacy, at times touching on hard rock.

The beginning is one of the best: the album opens with "This Will Never End", and the initial riff, powerful and sharp, immediately sticks in your mind. But after a few seconds, the real weakness of the album becomes apparent: Hansi. Yes, indeed, Hansi in this album sings in a way that, personally, is not very presentable. Where is the energy, the pathos, the uniqueness of the vocal timbre we had become accustomed to? A distant memory now. So, it is precisely the melody of the tracks themselves that suffers, which do not hit the listener as they should. Tracks are excellently played and technically impeccable, but sometimes lacking in bite. How can we not notice that the refrain (certainly not unforgettable) of the already mentioned first song is damnably similar to that of the second, "Otherland", for example? Or that Lionheart starts with a chilling intro only to turn into a decidedly avoidable dirge? "Carry the Blessed Home", then, an atypical ballad for the Germans, although not a completely failed experiment, still does not represent a particularly original chapter: it is a rather stereotypical ballad and reeks of déjà vu. Is the album to be thrown in the trash then? I'd say no.

Firstly, let's not forget "Fly", an experimental track that I personally consider well executed, where Hansi's voice this time blends well with the rest of the group, and with that solo in the middle part that is a pleasure to listen to, embedded within the song's vaguely prog-metal structure. "Turn the Page", perhaps the best of the bunch, evokes the folkish "Mirror Mirror", a small masterpiece of Guardian imprint. "Another Stranger Me" (the next single), is the hardest, with a finally convincing refrain. Not to forget "Straight Through the Mirror" (enough with these mirrors!), epic and powerful, and the medieval "Skalds And Shadows", which directly ties back to the legendary "the Bard’s Song", which will delight long-time fans. "The Edge" can be avoided, while "The New Order" is good, wrapping up an overall decent album (certainly not a must-listen).

This chapter "A Twist in the Myth", I sense, will be appreciated more by the "on fans" than by the more orthodox fans who are less inclined to novelty and style changes... it's certainly impossible not to notice the Bards' constant desire to try to renew themselves album after album, not risking falling into unsympathetic and uninteresting clichés, and this should be acknowledged to the Germans, regardless of the final outcome, which, I repeat, deserves some listen but is certainly not essential... a word to the wise...