NIGHTFALL IN MIDDLE-EARTH

Blind Guardian

Progressive Metal

4.06 | 318 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

puma

I choose to give this album 5 stars, because for me, it is the most highly-developed piece of songwriting I have heard in modern (post-1980s) heavy metal.

While not progressive in the "traditional" sense (whatever that means), this concept album featuring stories from Tolkien's "The Silmarillion" is a powerful piece of music that every fan of heavy metal and power metal should own, or at least be familiar with.

A track-by-track analysis would not do this album justice. I will instead speak about the album in its entirety, as should be done with a concept album. The songs are all very well-developed, with intriguing lyrics relating to the subject matter sung by a vocalist with immense power and range, a good balance of heavy riffing interspersed between medieval sounding guitar melodies, and a drummer who makes full use of every drum in his kit.

Song structure is interesting, with multiple parts in each song, many guitar solos (often 2 harmonized guitars, giving it that traditional heavy metal sound), good instrumental passages within the songs themselves, and very powerful, epic choruses that a crowd could very easily sing along to, giving the album great live potential (which, I must say, has definitely been exploited by the band). There are short filler tracks in between, but none of them last more than a minute, and they are easily skippable if you don't want to hear them; I feel that they set the stage for the song that follows, but that is a matter of personal preference.

A note to the reader: This is not "progressive metal" as you may imagine. There are no 13/8 riffs (or barely any time changes at all), no bleepy synthesizer solos (not even a keyboardist), and definitely not any songs over 7 minutes long; however the music carries just as much passion as anything made by the prog giants of old.

This is a very medieval and heavy album made by a very talented band. I can not recommend it enough to a fan of metal. I first heard it 4 years ago, and I still enjoy the songs on it. Let that be a testament to how this album will stand the test of time.

Puma

puma | 5/5 | 2007-7-12

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