BLIND GUARDIAN – A Night At The Opera

The most anticipated record of the year, I was sure this CD would blow up the scale of points at Metal Express. I love Blind Guardian, and the old albums are something my neighbors have gotten used to. Therefore, I have tried and I have tried, to find the greatness of “A Night At The Opera”. I can’t remember I tried so hard to get into a CD, and maybe I will have to re-evaluate my brain (and job) in a few years, when I finally understand this piece. For now, I will have to say that I can’t befriend this CD very much. To me, it seems like Germany’s leading speed metal outfit (well, that description fits the old CD’s maybe), has tried to bite over so much that the guys broke their jaws.

Maybe the melodies on the disc aren’t as good as expected, but then again – maybe there so many of them that my silly little head can’t handle them? Using a gazillion vocal tracks throughout the whole thing, it all seems to end up one-dimensional anyway. It gets too hard to separate the songs, as they all sound too much alike. (Or maybe not?) What I find annoying, except for the total overkill of Hansi’s voice due to the vocal tracks, is the clean guitar that goes along with the vocal harmony arrangements all the time – another aspect that makes the songs hard to differ. If I have to pick a favorite track of the 10 pieces, I’d say “Under The Ice”. If you ask me to pick the next one, I have no idea, not even after listening to the CD just as many times as there are vocal tracks here. Perhaps Blind Guardian has done the work of their lifetime, and I will discover that in a few years from now, or they have simply become studio junkies who enjoy making stuff they can not recreate on stage. We shall see…