SOMEWHERE FAR BEYOND

Somewhere Far Beyond ? 1992 (2.4/5) 9 ? Best Song: Bard Song (The Hobbit) You know what artistic growth equals to in the world of heavy metal? You look at the guy who made the most money in the last few years then do what he did. In this case you have Blind Guardian's first real album (the others were hallucinations), because it's their first album where they blatantly copy Metallica's 1980's style (even starting with an acoustic solo on the first song before turning all fast and thrashy). See, power metal has no soul, and therefore it's like eating paper. Eating paper is bland and tasteless, containing no flavor, but if you were to steal your neighbor's bottle of ketchup and spread a little on the paper, eating it might not be as difficult to digest. But the question is then begged: What if you don't like the taste of ketchup? What if you don't really care for Metallica? That is a conundrum, and what if your neighbor's ketchup is generic brand and out of date? What if none of your paper plates are clean? That makes digesting the paper a herculean task. My point being that you can't NOT have your own personal writing style and expect feebly stealing someone else's style to make everything better. Blind Guardian forgets what made bands like Metallica so exciting in the middle of the 1980's. There was variation ? if not diversity. The songs had real depth and movement. These songs, excepting a few, are all the same single song of one-note machine gun riffs and speed drumming and tone deaf verses between partially uplifting choruses. The only real exception is the competent 'Theater of Pain', which changes the tempo. I did find myself fancying the 'Bard Song' two-pack. It makes me wish they'd done the entire record in that vein. The groove is slightly memorable and it seems like they actually put effort into it! Too bad it doesn't save the other 45 minutes of garbage. It's an improvement I suppose.