martindavey87 After the ridiculously ambitious albums 'Nightfall in Middle Earth' and 'A Night at the Opera', I think it's fair to say that Blind Guardian deserved a bit of a break, and so here we have 'A Twist in the Myth', a release that saw the band break away from the ten-minute songs brimming with multiple vocal harmonies and orchestrations, to instead, focus on more easily accessible compositions, that still maintain the bands signature sound.

Blind Guardian's trademark take on power and progressive metal is in full effect here, not being diminished by the more stripped-down and laid back approach. There's still plenty of guitar harmonies and epic vocal performances, and the evident folk influences gives this record a more upbeat and energetic feel than previous releases. It's a good starting point for those who are deterred by serious, Tolkien-inspired concept albums.

There's a couple of filler songs that prevent this from getting five stars, but otherwise it's an all-round solid effort. Songs like 'Another Stranger Me', 'Fly', 'Turn the Page', 'This Will Never End' and 'Straight Through the Mirror' are all great tracks that can easily go next to any of the bands bigger pieces without seeming out of place. However, ambitious, over-the-top epics is where Blind Guardian really flourish, and as it is, while 'A Twist in the Myth' is a great album, it'll never be their best.

adg211288 A Twist in the Myth is the eight album from Blind Guardian. Released in 2006 this is the album that sees the band taking something of a more straightforward and accessible approach to their songs, especially in contrast to the previous offering A Night at the Opera. The songs are typically shorter with no song hitting the six minute mark, though a couple come close, which means that there is also no real epic track that some of the album’s have, such as And Then There Was Silence from the previous album. The vocals of Hansi Kürsch are not on this album done in multiple layers, creating a sound that was intended to be easier to reproduce live. You only need to browse the Internet a bit to realise that some Blind Guardian fans don’t rate this album so highly, and while I find it to be on the lower end of my own ranking of the group’s albums, this is still pretty solid stuff, albeit not what Blind Guardian fans have come to expect from them.

For the most part the songs of A Twist in the Myth are in the range of ‘good, but not great’, however this album does contain some real gems such as Turn the Page which is a lively piece that could easily have been made into a folk metal song, and almost has that feel anyway with the vocal delivery, and ballad Carry the Blessed Home, which is about Stephen King’s Dark Tower series once again, a popular lyrical theme for Blind Guardian. Perhaps surprisingly another gem is single Fly, which is actually, on a careful listen, one of the most progressively inclined songs on the album. Finally there is Skalds and Shadows, which represents the folk piece of the album. I’ve always liked it when Blind Guardian includes such a song and while this isn’t the best such song they ever did, it remains one of the gems of A Twist in the Myth.

Despite having very few really great moments all in all A Twist in the Myth is just another really solid Blind Guardian release, the real problem here is that it’s just not what fans of the band would really expect to hear from them, it’s less focused on the epic side of the band and is without exception a collection of pretty straightforward songs with no really unexpected moments cropping up, in short once you’re a few tracks in it’s a pretty predictable and even generic album, however one that still sounds like the work of a group of competent musicians to me. While I do really enjoy this album for what it is, I can see why some fans feel let down by it and understand where such people are coming from when they say it is the weakest point in the Blind Guardian catalogue even if I don’t quite agree with it. In short this is a good album, but Blind Guardian can and has done better.

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven)

Time Signature This will never end...

Genre: power metal

This is certainly a fine album with symphonic tendencies and lots of melody, and interesting "Queen-like vocal arrangements" (to quote Mike from ProgFreak). There are also a lot of interesting compositional turns, which is pretty much a Blind Guardian guardian speciality. Another Blind guardian speciality is a folksy medieval feel, and there is also plenty of that on this album, as in "Turn the Page". Hansi Kursch's vocal performance is also quite amazing on this album. And, of course, there are plenty of twin lead guitars, which is something that I totally love.

So, there are a lot of good things on this album. I do miss, however, the speed metal tendencies of their older albums, because they added a certain unique energy, and it was also the contrast between these speed metal tendencies and the symphonic elements that make Blind Guardian unique (but, amazingly, even with the speed metal elements missing, the level of cheesiness is appropriately low). I also think that the sound is a bit, too, polished - and my guess is that it's been processed a lot digitally.

So, a nice album, but certainly not the best Blind Guardian album out there.