Blind Guardian – At The Edge of TIme
Release Date: July 30, 2010
Highlights: Sacred Worlds, Tanelorn, Control The Divine, A Voice In The Dark, Whee of Time
There must be something in the water in Germany that makes all the Metal bands there take things to epic proportions. Symphonic Metal is a genre that has pretty much been perfected by our Metal brothers and sisters overseas and it seems to be making quite an impact here in the states. Blind Guardian’s latest and ninth album “At The Edge of Time” is without a doubt symphonic. The opening track “Sacred Worlds” opens with a literal orchestra that made me feel as if I was settling in for a dark, haunting play and just as the music builds to a climatic level, the guitars transition in literally marrying the two worlds of classical music and heavy metal. It is an amazing thing to hear and there is so much ear candy there. Harps, strings, timpani, guitars, oh my! Lead vocalist Hansi Kürsch is without a doubt the element that brings it all in full circle. His voice is so full of character and passion that it compliments the passion in the complex arrangements.
The symphonic element on “At The Edge of Time” is not so heavily over used in every song that it gets ridiculous so songs like “Tanelorn”, “Control The Divine” and “A Voice In The Dark” step up and take on a lives of their own as very classic sounding metal songs that beckon back to classic Helloween. I know it must sound lame to have to drop a Helloween comparison on many German Metal bands but trust me, it’s not a bad thing. Helloween are to German Metal what bands like “The Big Four” are to American Metal. It’s not a bad thing!
Songs like “Curse My Name” and “War of the Thrones” embrace a more Celtic, medieval persona which while I can appreciate it, it kind of had me rolling my eyes a little bit. I can appreciate Celtic/Medieval music on it’s own but it just seemed to sound kind of out of element and contrived in a Metal setting. I could totally get behind the Symphonic elements of Blind Guardian but these songs pretty much had me looking for a Stonehenge that would be in danger of being trampled on by dwarfs. These songs just completely seemed to kill the momentum of the album and any kind of flow that it may have had. Again, I’m not saying that these songs particularly sucked but to come out of a a Celtic inspired ballad and slam right into ‘A Voice In the Dark” just reminded me of how Glam Bands would have this terrible ballad on an album and then try to recover with a “heavy” song. Luckily for Blind Guardian, they actually recover nicely from these songs.
In the end, Blind Guardian made a really good album. Is it great in my opinion? Not really. It’s a solid album and I can see myself listening to it as background music but the album lacks any kind of personality or character that made me feel engaged. By the time I was six songs deep, I could only pick one song that had really made an impact on me and that was the opening track “Sacred Worlds.” As opposed to possessing an engaging flow, “At The Edge of Time” just seems to fly by you. If that’s what Blind Guardian was out to accomplish than they did just that but if they were looking to engage and draw me into the songs, I totally missed the boat on this one.
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