Blind Guardian
Beyond The Red Mirror

You can evaluate individual periods of Blind Guardian creativity in different ways. Although the group did not make extremely sharp turns in its path, there was still a moment when the direction began to change to "Nightfall in the Middle-Earth" and aligned with the album "A Twist in the Myth". In short: the metal part has faded into the background, while remaining a kind of rod around which curl light, concise and elegant phrases from the pen of Andre, which, coupled with a rather non-linear manner of singing-narrative of Hansi, serve as a driving force for the development of the composition . It’s just marveling: with compositions not overloaded with turbo-solos to the broken rhythm in the amount of 124 by 258 to the text about uranium isotopes, the group brings to the listener a story that is really interesting to listen to. I’ll run ahead, and I’ll say right away that something went wrong with the familiar Blind Guardian music formula. There is no logical consistency of the narrative, its form as a whole has remained the same, but the content can be very limp on two legs. So much so that even after the 10th listening, you look at the name of the track and in your head is a void. It does not appear in the memory of associations; some separate melodic moves do not float; everything is in a fog. And one cannot say that the album leaves some negative impressions; rather, it simply does not leave them. Personally, I like, to one degree or another, all of their work. The last two I rubbed into the holes - in general, many say that they lost their former dynamics and became boring, but that I even liked it. On this album, the group decided to weaken the dynamics and pressure a little more; this time there were even light and pleasant flirting with pop vocals on "Prophecies" and "The Throne", well, even the orchestral parts were actively added to the rhythmic base, which could be seen earlier, but on a smaller scale. And yet, on this album, with all this, I can highlight for myself some things that, in my opinion, turned out well: this is a pretty clear opener "Ninth Wave"; very light and airy "Prophecies"; the dreamy half ballad "Distant Memories" is the pearl of this album, a surprisingly melodic and chamber thing in the midst of this bulky and pathos orchestra; and, perhaps, the successful final epic of "Grand Parade" is an epic, as it is, dramatic, ambitious and putting an end to the story. The rest of the album sags a lot and just leaves it confused and a little indifferent.