BLIND GUARDIAN — At The Edge Of Time (review)

BLIND GUARDIAN — At The Edge Of Time album cover Album · 2010 · Power Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
The Angry Scotsman
Blind Guardian's best album yet!

"At the Edge of Time" is not only the best album created by the band, it's a really great album on its own. It was one of my top 10 metal albums for 2010, and was even knocking on the door of top 5. While I like Blind Guardian better than most other power metal bands, they suffer from the biggest problem of the genre: sameyness. The music speeds forward, every song shredding along unrelentingly with lightning riffs and solos and double bass drumming. It can get quite dull after a while.

However, Blind Guardian really put out a different album this time! The music is very progressive and melodic, still with plenty of speed and melodies and songwriting to die for.

Just to clarify, while I do love progressive music, (and that trait usually is a notch up in my book) it's not just because it is so, but generally because it's more interesting. This is exactly the case here, every song sounds different, lots of variation and progressive songs that keep it fresh and interesting. Blazing musicianship is still abundant, tempered with great songwriting, and packed with awesome sections of music. There's no other way to put it, the music is well composed, epic and just really damn good.

One area where Blind Guardian always stood out was at vocals. While most power metal singers live at a high pitched wail that can become too much, Hansi displays great variation and a gruff, hard edged tone. He can of course nail the soaring high notes and the German accent is just wonderful. On this album Hansi's vocals are brilliant yet again.

So with "At the Edge of Time" we see a new Blind Guardian, a more progressive one, loaded with melodies, musicianship and songwriting that are just stellar. Capped off with a great vocal showcase from one of the better singers in metal. All the songs are quite good and there's no real weak one. Two standouts are "Curse my Name" an epic folky tune and "Wheel of Time" a truly awesome song that has some middle eastern sounds and just about everything I've mentioned about this album, woven into a brilliant 9 minute song.

Great Album

Four Stars
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Wilytank wrote:
more than 2 years ago
Though the only other albums I've listened to by them are Imaginations from the Other Side and Nightfall In Middle Earth, I actually like this one better than them as well.

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