BLIND GUARDIAN TWILIGHT ORCHESTRA
“LEGACY OF THE DARK LANDS”
Album Review by Piers Renfree

9/10

Hello again girls and boys and welcome back to the mud hut for yet another day in isolation. This could be going on for a while yet. Funny thing is – not so long ago, people were happy, sitting down in front of the TV, watching other people stuck in a house 24/7! Now they’re being told to stay in, they don’t like it. The way to think about the situation is this – you’re not stuck at home, you’re safe at home.

Now I’ve had a Pot Noodle for my lunch, let’s see what musical eargasms we can find for you to enjoy while you’re staying safe at home in these troubling times. 

Aha – here we have the latest album from Blind Guardian Twilight Orchestra “Legacy Of Dark Lands”. If, like myself, you are a newcomer to Blind Guardian, then let us go through a brief history of the band. The band were formed in 1984, with the name “Lucifer’s Heritage” in Krefeld, Germany. Hansi Kursch (lead vocals) and Andre Olbrich (lead guitar, backing vocals) have been in the band since 1984. By the time the band released their debut album, “Battalions Of Fear” in 1988, they had changed their name to Blind Guardian. 

Since their 1988 debut, they have released another 10 studio albums – “Follow The Blind” (1989), “Tales From The Twilight World” (1990), “Somewhere Far Beyond” (1992), “Imaginations From The Other Side” (1995), “Nightfall In Middle Earth” (1998), “A Night At The Opera” (2002), “A Twist In The Myth” (2006), “At The Edge Of Time” (2010), “Beyond The Red Mirror” (2015), and this “Legacy Of Dark Lands”. Currently the band are completed by Marcus Siepen (rhythm guitar & backing vocals) and Frederik Ehmke (drums percussion, flute, bagpipes). 

Now, I have been aware of Blind Guardian for many years and I did try a couple of songs of theirs on YouTube once, but they didn’t grab me at the time (maybe I wasn’t quite in the mood for them, or maybe the PC speakers didn’t do the music justice) and so I didn’t follow up with them.

Hearing that this album is Blind Guardian working with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra I was expecting something along the lines of Metallica’s “S&M” or the phenomenal “Ghettysburg” trilogy by Iced Earth (from their “Glorious Burden” album), a mix of metal band and orchestra. However, there is no metal in this at all!

The Prague Philharmonic Orchestra provides the music while Hansi Kursch sings the lyrics. This is a concept album over two CDs, so not only do you have some cracking music, but a story to escape into as well, which is aways a bonus. We get some spoken dialogue from characters, which helps to carry the story (think along the lines of Jeff Wayne’s “War Of The Worlds”).

You don’t miss the metal from this album, it sounds natural and organic. Some pieces of the music remind me a bit of Tim Burton’s gothic style of film making, but there are big, epic moments as well and this is a top notch album.

TRACKLIST

1. 1618 Ouverture
2. The Gathering
3. War Feeds War
4. Comets and Prophecies
5. Dark Cloud’s Rising
6. The Ritual
7. In the Underworld
8. A Secret Society
9. The Great Ordeal
10. Bez
11. In the Red Dwarf’s Tower
12. Into the Battle
13. Treason
14. Between the Realms
15. Point of No Return
16. The White Horseman
17. Nephilim
18. Trial and Coronation
19. Harvester of Souls
20. Conquest Is Over
21. This Storm
22. The Great Assault
23. Beyond the Wall
24. A New Beginning

http://www.blind-guardian.com
https://www.facebook.com/blindguardian/

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