BLIND GUARDIAN
“LIVE BEYOND THE SPHERES”
Album Review By Mike Hackenschmidt
9.5/10
So I guess Blind Guardian decided to release a triple live album. So for everyone who has never seen Blind Guardian live and are wondering “Are they any good live?” the answer is an emphatic HELL YES. I have seen them live twice and I will never forget either. I’ll get into the why of that later, but just to give a general idea, I would say Blind Guardian are at least 50% better live than they are in the studio.
Before I get too deep into this, let me say that a live album is completely different than a studio album and will be rated as such. First, we likely have already heard the songs and they’re probably only going to play the ones that people react well to. So in a way, the live album has the advantage of familiarity of the music and it’s already been tested. From the other perspective, the band now has the obligation to make the live album feel as much like a live performance as possible. Let’s be real here, a live album serves 3 purposes. The first purpose is to sell albums… obvious, I know. The second is to sell concert tickets. The 3rd is to bring the live experience to those who can’t get to a Blind Guardian live show, be it due to geography, finances, or any other circumstance. So in rating this album, I’m mostly looking at points 2 and 3. People are going to buy this album, that’s for damn sure but what are they going to get?
Starting with the cover, this is one of the finest album covers I’ve seen this year. It’s something that you have to zoom in on to catch all the detail. The imagery itself is not just appealing, but it fits the Blind Guardian brand. Everything from the wraith riding the dragon to the runes and album title lit from the fires below scream Blind Guardian to all those who know. And for those who don’t, this is your induction ceremony.
The album itself opens with a choir singing the intro to The Ninth Wave, originally off the Red Mirror. The promo package says they worked with 3 choirs on the tour when Beyond the Spheres was recorded but it’s not clear if the version that made the live album had a live choir or not. I don’t see them in the video but I’m also not sure if the album and video are the same version.
So to be clear, Live Beyond the Spheres is a triple live CD recorded over several shows during their 2015 European tour. Blind Guardian, rather correctly identify as perfectionists and I guess that’s why they chose to take clips from different shows and put them all together to assemble this masterpiece. To me though, this was unnecessary and takes away from the live experience that I expect the album to deliver. A live concert goer will not have the benefit of hand selected versions. They will simply get what is dished out. They don’t usually get 22 songs spanning 2 hours and 39 minutes. They don’t usually get every song they want to hear. And while I know, these all sound like things a person would want in a live album, at the same time a little bit of authenticity is removed. Blind Guardian has been amazing both times I’ve seen them live – unforgettable, in fact, so the unnecessary quality control is really the only fault I can find in this album.
To prove my point that they are always great live, I’m going to sneak in a video that’s not from this album. It‘s actually from the second time I saw them live, at Wacken in 2016. I remember exactly where I was standing (next to the bar closest to the Jaggermeister Reindeer) and that I was with my brother who I hadn’t seen in years. To be fair, I forgot a lot about that weekend, but I remember Blind Guardian. I remember the Bard Song and I remember Valhalla.
The version of the Bard Song on Live Beyond the Spheres takes me back to Wacken. How often do 80,000 strong know every word to a song? Usually they just know the chorus. The rendition of Valhalla not only brings me back to Wacken, but it also brings me back 8 or 9 years to my first live experience with Blind Guardian. It happened to be my 2 older sons’ first metal show. It could have easily been forgettable had I taken them to see someone else. But Guardian? They’ve been putting on amazing shows for years and years. And my first time, it wasn’t in front of 80,000 but instead at the Opera House in Toronto with a capacity of 950. Even with that small crowd, the chants of “Valhalla, Deliverance, Why have you ever forgotten me?” rang out for what felt like 2-3 minutes after the band stopped playing. Hansi had to gesture us to stop so they could move on to the next song. I’ll never forget that and I believe my sons, 10 and 8 at the time will likely remember that forever. And it didn’t seem to matter to Blind Guardian if they were playing for 950 or 80,000. They would put on a great show if only 20 people came, not a doubt in my mind. As you can see from the video above, they’ve learned to control the crowd better over the years but in the live album version they let the crowd chant a little longer than they did at Wacken. (From 4:35 thru 7:10 where Hansi takes over to close it out) Regardless, since then I’ve been to hundreds of shows but I’ve never seen a crowd electrified like I did that night in Toronto. And it was totally organic. This is the Blind Guardian Live experience so when I take off that ½ point for reducing that experience by using hand selected versions to assemble the album vs just recording a show end to end I want my readers to know why.
Here’s another official live release from the actual live album. I’ve exceeded my allowable length so I will briefly say that I tried to sync the video up with the album to see if it’s the same version and though I’m useless at pressing play on both media at the same time, I’m still pretty sure they’re the same.
Mirror Mirror closes out what could be my favourite live album of all time. I would really have to dig thru my collection to decide if this is truly the case or if it’s just the one I heard most recently that happens to be truly great. Sadly, I simply don’t have the time to confirm it either way. Blind Guardian truly create magic and though Live Beyond the Spheres couldn’t possibly live up to actually being at a Blind Guardian concert, this is closest you can expect to come to the real experience. From the crowd interaction to the perfect execution from the band this album showcases the Blind Guardian Live experience. I apologize if I didn’t talk enough about the actual album but and truly the best way I can convey how good this is would be to share my experiences.
TRACKLIST
The Ninth Wave
Banish From Sanctuary
Nightfall
Prophecies
Tanelorn
The Last Candle
And Then There Was Silence
The Lord Of The Rings
Fly
Bright Eyes
Lost In The Twilight Hall
Imaginations From The Other Side
Into The Storm
Twilight Of The Gods
A Past And Future Secret
And The Story Ends
Sacred Worlds
The Bard’s Song
Valhalla
Wheel Of Time
Majesty
Mirror Mirror
Release Date? It’s 2017 “on the 7th day of July” via Nuclear Blast. (sorry, had to)
https://www.blind-guardian.com
https://www.facebook.com/blindguardian
https://www.nuclearblast.de/blindguardian
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