NIGHTFALL IN MIDDLE-EARTH

Blind Guardian's Nightfall In Middle-Earth finds the band moving out of their comfort zone and doing something a little ambitious - a lavish concept album drawing on the narrative of the Silmarillion, the body of myth and legend penned by Tolkien which forms the backstory to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Whilst many artists find that the concept album format helps add focus and direction to their music, I feel Blind Guardian stumble here.

Firstly, they inject the album with far too many narrative interludes, ruining the flow of the music; secondly, even with the narrative interludes, the plot is extremely hard to follow unless you're already very familiar with the story. In retrospect, they might have had a bit more success if they'd honed things down to focus on a particular story from the Silmarillion rather than trying to take in as much of the whole narrative as they could.

Finally, when it gets right down to it the music on this album is much the same as on any other Blind Guardian album from this period in their career - cheesy power metal with stirring vocal harmonies are the order of the day and there really aren't that many surprises. In short, what you get here is an alright Blind Guardian album bogged down by the band's attempt to add narrative structure.