Blind Guardian
Tokyo Tales

THE REVIEW

Apparently, a new album by Blind Guardian has been released and from what I've read around, it seems to be quite awful. After all, what can you expect from a band that has lost themselves in Middle Earth for more than fifteen years? Wandering in wild lands among orcs and elves must not be too good for mental health and surely doesn't help in finding the strength and inspiration needed to resurrect a genre that, to be perfectly honest, no longer seems to have any reason to exist. Yes, because power metal for over a decade now has been nothing more than a gaudy mix of plastic-like symphonies and happy-gay choruses, and Blind Guardian themselves are also partly to blame for this, as with "Imaginations From the Other Side" and "Nightfall in Middle-Earth" they paved the way for bands like Rhapsody (of Fire) and Nightwish, bands whose mere mention makes you break out in a cold sweat. Maybe it's because I overindulged in these sounds when I was younger, so now they make me feel nauseous, kind of like when you have a bad experience with some strong alcohol and then can’t even look at it anymore.

It follows, therefore, that not even the aforementioned “Imaginations etc…” gets my approval, despite being recognized as the band's most commendable work, and I thus have to go back to the time when Kürsch and company played hard without worrying too much about it, without seeking artifices that might ennoble their genre, with results that in the long run ended up paralyzing it. And so, emerging from the mists of time is “Tokyo Tales”, a live recorded during the “Somewhere Far Beyond” tour in the Land of the Rising Sun; it's no secret that the Japanese like power metal, as all the bonus tracks Sonata Arctica (brrrr!) made especially for them demonstrate.

The performance delivers one after the other the best songs from the group's early phase, without giving space to medieval/fantasy/tear-jerker ballads, indeed only "Lord of the Rings" represents this category but only as a Japanese bonus track (just as I thought), even "The Bard’s Song - In the Forest" is banned, and the result is a live version pounding with metal, where the guitars scratch and the drums pound, and finally you hear some power, after all, they called this music power metal and maybe that's exactly why. It must be said that the bass was re-recorded in the studio since Kürsch wasn't phenomenal at singing and playing simultaneously, which is probably why Oliver Holzwarth was later hired to replace him live, the older of two brothers who had to set aside their Sieges Even and prostitute themselves to power metal to make ends meet. Anyway, overall the album doesn't disappoint and the Japanese singing their lungs out with the choruses contributes to the good success of it all.

The only thing I feel like adding is that it wouldn't have cost them anything to play "Run for the Night" as well.