A Twist In The Myth

The wait of four long years is over, comrades. Sure, live material in both CD and DVD form have been thrown to us hungry wolves to soothe us since the days of A Night At The Opera, but admit it or not, what we all want is brand new studio material from the one and the only Blind Guardian. The album title gives impressions of considerable changes in the bands usual repertoire of grandiose metal blitzkrieg, folky interludes, stratospheric choirs and anthemic vocal sections. Such is not the case. The album is very easily distinguishable Guardian through and through. Fortunately the too-much-of-the-good-stuff-mammothdisease that plagued ANATO has been mostly cured. Especially the production – clear and crisp, mind you – is not crammed so full of every possible harmonizing note and layering guitar. The music breathes nicely and blasts with full coherent force. The album mixes several different styles and parts of BG’s past very well together. This Will Never End and The Edge (with considerably quirky Nintendo-like sound effects popping out here and there) are part of the heavier, aggressive tunes that harken slightly back to the bands early 90’s material. New drummer Frederik Ehmke seems to have all the potential to fill in the gargantuan boots left by Thomen Stauch. Give him a couple of albums and we will see if those fills and thundering rolls fall into place as well as with The Omen. Otherland and Lionheart are more in line with the later progressive and orchestrated line of work with the über-bombast and complex playing, even on this bands scale of work. The acoustic Skalds And Shadows tries to raise the crowd up like a new Bards Song but doesn’t get my lighter as high as it did on the single release. I enjoy the flute a lot, though. Speaking of singles, Fly is still a brilliant track with the hard rock leanings and oriental keyboards. Love ‘em! I would say my favourites are Carry The Blessed Home (a beautiful yet hard edged ballad), The New Order (intro brings Led Zeppelin to my mind, don’t know about you) and Turn The Page (Those march drums and the nananaa-part are simply fantastic, listening to this one on repeat constantly). Hansi Kursch hasn’t missed one octave during these few years. His gruffy yet piercing wail is still one of the most unique and in my opinion best voices in metal. The guitar widdlings are kept in appropriate amounts in both technicality and melody. Nice amounts of hooks in the interludes too. To conclude this rant of one of my most anticipated releases of the year, I will perform a short questionnaire: Q: Did I expect the most mind-swallowing, melodystorming, metallizing album that ever could be produced? A: Yes. Q: Did I get that? A: No. Q: Then what did you get? A: I got an excellent album that carries on the fantasmical story of Blind Guardian very well. I don’t consider A Twist In The Myth their best work, but I wasn’t disappointed either. The mixture of styles through the years makes for a great record with only small amounts of filler. The only thing stopping the quote just below 90 is the fact that the best BG works have had more galaxy-tearing “hits” on them. At least on these first tens of listenings ATITM has more of a very solid, general quality. But speaking seriously, any band that can make probably one of the most played-out lyrical parts like nananaa’s work hand in hand with medieval and progressive styles of rock and metal as marvellously as here deserves huge applause and moshings.