Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Proof, if proof were needed, that the vast array of Metal, in which ever guise or sub genre it takes, is in such a healthy state of mind as soon as you go past Dover and head east, south or across the North Sea to Scandinavia is to found in the latest album by German Metal Kings Blind Guardian, the sensational Beyond the Red Mirror.
There are pockets of resistance, small gathering of men and women in North America and the U.K. who keep the fires of yesteryear burning with the appropriate tour here and there, the surge in album sales often down to those few alone but as much it pains anybody with a heart that sang with unrepentant joy when the latest album by Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth or any of the truly big names was offered on plate, time passes and the bell that rang out at the end of a way of life, a dying breed, at the start of AC/DC’s Black In Black album, now seems to be deafening…some will ignore and it is hoped they bring about a resurgence soon, until then though Blind Guardian’s Beyond The Red Mirror will more than suffice the long winter evenings and the keep the soul black enough to shake the head in.
Five years have passed since the band produced anything in the studio, half a decade of quiet abandonment, the ears restless, the heart of the fan pining away as if left to fend by itself by a cruel and reluctant lover, the sound of power metal at its finest withdrawn and left to cope…until through the mess of civilisation, the silence is punctuated by the sound of the lover putting her key into the door and twisting it enough to send the pulse racing with timed malicious beauty.
Utilising two genres of music to get the desired effect, genres that don’t necessarily mix well at times and in who other bands have been labelled as going through the eyes of pretentiousness when they attempt to mix orchestra and the boom of an electric guitar, Blind Guardian steals the show to the point where potential excess is not just tolerated but demanded in full.
The fusing of both the Hungarian Studio Orchestra and FILMharmonic Choir Prague with Hansi Kürsch and André Olbrich’s composition not only works well but is gratifying, beautifully enhanced with merciless imagery and commanding authority. The album is one of those rarely produced pieces of work in which songs cannot be taken out of context, the whole albums requires, as if set down in some ancient law and sacred text, to be listened to as a complete body of fulfilled labour.
Even if taken out of context, tracks such as the two parts to The Cleansing of the Promised Land, The Ninth Wave and Twilight of the Gods, The Disturbance of the Peace and The Fallen and the Chosen One all hammer home the re-emergence of the lover you knew so well that the vinyl inducing perfume begs to be breathed in and asks only that you listen to the whole album to get the full desired effect. A sing out of context is finem but it’s just a nibble on the ear compared to raging passion underneath.
Blind Guardian may have left the listener alone too long but with a simple apology and the promise of passion to come, who could resist the charms?
An outstanding comeback!
Ian D. Hall