New Album Blind Guardian: At The Edge Of Time

The new album comes with 10 songs (reaching almost 70 minutes) and additional 6 bonus tracks and 2 videos if you buy the deluxe edition.
Blind Guardian continues in the tradition started by The Night At Opera and mastered in the Twist In The Myth - multi-track orchestral compositions without synthetic improvements and high musicianship; this is not music for ordinary metalhead, sometimes you feel more like listening to symphonic orchestra or opera.

1. "Sacred Worlds" - 9:17
Very long song with complicated composition and symphonic intro. A bit unusual at the beginning of album, it is one of the technically most elaborated pieces here.

2. "Tanelorn (Into the Void)" - 5:58
This song inspired by Michael Moorcock's has a bit of taste of the albums of the early era, like the Imaginations From The Other Side.

3. "Road of No Release" - 6.30
Slower and a bit melancholic track, with some great guitar solos and choirs, which gets much faster as the story reaches the end

4. "Ride Into Obsession" - 4.46
The fastest song (solid 210 bpm for those, who know something about tempo in music)

5. "Curse My Name" - 5:52
Beautiful acoustic song (string and flute), which reminds us the cult Bard Song: In The Forrest

6. "Valkyries" - 6:38
Another song filled with bombastic choirs and solos

7. "Control the Divine" - 5:26
Complicated song with a taste of mysticism, one of those requiring a bit of concentration to understand all the musical carvings.

8. "War of the Thrones" (piano version) - 4:55
Second slow song, dominated by Hansi's muscular voice (probably the most original metal voice along with Dickenson and Halford), piano and catchy lyrics.

9. "A Voice in the Dark" - 5:41
Another song, which offers more raw sound of traditional heavy metal without too many simultaneous lines and minimum of choirs.

10. "Wheel of Time" - 8:55
One of the most beautiful songs on the album, cleverly using trumpets and traditional instruments to create oriental atmosphere. As the name suggest, it was inspired by Rober Jordan's epic serie of Wheel Of Time (my favourite!)

Bonus disc contains pre-production version of Sacred Worlds, orchestral version of Wheel of Time, a bit silly cover version of You're the Voice, and finally demos of Tanelorn, Curse My Name and A Voice In The Dark. You can also enjoy videoclip of the Sacred and a studio documentary

Excellent fantasy flavoured cover artwork was created by Columbian artist Felipe Machado

Blind Guardian (first called a bit childishly Lucifer's Heritage) started in 1984 in west German town Krefeld, with Hansi Kürsch (lead vocals and Bass), André Olbrich (Lead guitar), Marcus Siepen (Rhythm guitar) and Thome Stauch (drums), who left the band in 2005 and hi place was taken by Frederik Ehmke, who besides drums masters also percussions, flute and bagpipes.

The very first album Battalions of Fear (1988) was a typical piece of the speed metal era, inspired by Helloween and Gamma Ray, similarly the next Follow the Blind (1989). The next three albums broke the trivial speed metal spell and offered something more: Tales from the Twilight World (1990), Somewhere Far Beyond (1992) with legendary "The Bard's Song: In the Forest (blind Guradian are sometimes called playing 'Bard Metal') and Imaginations from the Other Side (1995) were grown up fantasy metal album with original music, Hansi's mature voice and perfect lyrics, inspired by the worlds of J.R.R Tolkien, Stephen King and Michael Moorcock.

The most legendary album came in 1998. Concept album Nightfall in Middle-Earth, inspired by Silmarillion, had 22 tracks and offered exceptional fantasy experience, far from 'dragon slaying' triviality of Rhapsody and alike. After this album, the band changed its course a bit. The next two albums, A Night at the Opera (2002) and A Twist in the Myth (2006) were in sign of an orchestra-like metal, full of complicated solos, choirs and multiple sound lines. These albums disgusted many traditional metal fans, but made Blind Guardian definitely one of the most unique metal bands of our era.