BLIND GUARDIAN — Tales From the Twilight World (review)

BLIND GUARDIAN — Tales From the Twilight World album cover

Album · 1990 · Power Metal

5/5 · 2011-01-04
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Tales From The Twilight World is a very special album to me. Not because it was my introduction to Blind Guardian (it wasn’t), but because after hearing several of their songs it was this album that I brought first and has remained one of my favourites of theirs ever since, and along with its next two follow-ups, Somewhere Far Beyond and Imaginations From the Other Side makes up the first of what I consider to me a trio of essentially masterpieces from this fantastic band.

The album couldn’t begin in any a more epic fashion with Traveller in Time. Vocals enter right from the off, the music slower than what will be typical of the album. It’s an epic build up into the main song and personally I wish more bands would start albums like this instead of including intro tracks which mostly end up pointless pieces of filler. No such case here. At about forty-five seconds it the speed picks up and the album is truly away. There is less of a thrash feel on this album than on its two predecessors, much more speed metal influence and there is also evidence of Blind Guardian starting to show power and progressive elements in their music. The chorus in this song really gets you going and the lead solo section, which has its slower and melodic sections as well as speed really makes the track the masterpiece that it is. Everything is perfect and the rest of the album continues the tread. Tracks such as Tommyknockers, Goodbye My Friend, and The Last Candle in particular are all just as good.

That’s not to say that the albums other tracks are inferior, trust me, they’re not. Straight after Traveller in Time we get Welcome to Dying, a track which Jon Schaffer of Iced Earth (and Blind Guardian’s frontman Hansi’s side project Demons & Wizards) has credited as his favourite Blind Guardian song. Well I personally don’t share that opinion but I can see why. Though it’s a shorter piece than Traveller in Time, it’s no less epic. Hansi’s vocals really shine here.

The oddball of the album has to be Weird Dreams, a short instrumental between Welcome to Dying and Lord of the Rings. It’s pretty much a foreshadowing of future progressive influence.

Lord of the Rings is the ballad of the album, showcasing Blind Guardian’s soft side really well. The acoustic driven chorus in particular really puts me in mind of Middle-Earth and Tolkien’s tale, from which the song is based. The band don't consider this the proper version of the song (that can be found on the compilation The Forgotten Tales) but I like this version as well, even if there are thematic mistakes in the lyrics.

In Lost in the Twilight Hall Kai Hansen appears on guest vocals (as he did on Valhalla from Follow the Blind). He does vocal tradeoffs with Hansi rather than having his own section in this song and it works better than on Valhalla, although I didn’t mind him on that song. Hansen also appears on lead guitar in The Last Candle. There’s also a nice lyrical reference to Traveller in Time in the song.

If in all the song’s there is a weaker point it is Altair 4. This song is basically just an epilogue to Tommyknockers, as both of them are based off the same book. It starts with some ambient style synths before some heaviness kicks in. It’s another track which has progressive influence. Note that I choose the word weaker instead of weak. Weak implies it’s not very good but weaker implies that it’s just not as good as the rest of the album, and that pretty much sums of Altair 4. Good, but after the epic Tommyknockers, perhaps a moment to calm down before moving onto The Last Candle, which coincidently is a great way to end the studio material on the album (or the album as a whole, if you are listening to a non-Japanese original). There’s also another lyrical reference in this song to a past song, this time Guardian of the Blind from Battalions of Fear.

There’s a nice nod to literature on this album’s lyrics (as there has been in other Blind Guardian albums), with themes including Frank Herbert’s Dune (Traveller in Time), Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (Lord of the Rings & Lost in the Twilight Hall), and Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers (Tommyknockers and Altair 4). Unfortunately there’s a lyrical mistake in Lord of the Rings where Hansi sings about “Seven rings to the gnoms”. In The Lord of the Rings books the line should have been “Seven rings to the Dwarves”. Of course this is only a lyrical mistake in terms of continuity with Tolkien’s work, and bears to effect on the enjoyment of the album and they fixed it on the new version of the song that I mentioned earlier, which can be found on The Forgotten Tales.

Hansi’s vocals are top notch on this album. He varies from very clean singing (Lord of the Rings), to more aggressive singing (but never full on growling). The rhythm section is extremely tight in terms of speed, which make this a very heavy album. Definitely a headbanging record if ever there was one. Lead guitar is impressive as well, solos kick in just where they’re needed, and overall Tales From The Twilight World is an extremely well planned and executed album.

Since I have the 2007 Remaster here, I’m going to close this review with some talk on the bonus tracks (though note that the score of this album only takes the main album into account).

First up is a live version of Run for the Night which originally appeared on the debut album Battalions of Fear. This was a bonus track for the Japanese version of the album original but now appears on all pressings (hence my earlier note album The Last candle being the end of the studio material). One thing to note is that if you have all remastered versions, this is the third album in a row to feature this song, what with battalions of Fear having the original, Follow the Blind having a demo version and now this live version. Despite the fact that it is a good song, talk about over flogging it.

The next two bonus tracks are new for the remastered edition. Both are demos from this very album, the chosen tracks being Lost in the Twilight Hall and Tommyknockers. Lost in the Twilight Hall is perhaps the more notable of the two, as it is a version which doesn’t include Kai Hansen in any shape or form. The vocal tradeoffs section is sung only by Hansi in a distinctly different style, which is understandable as in the final version both singer’s lines overlap. Tommyknockers is no less epic for being a demo version, though it does sound quite different in terms of tone and production.

Overall score of this album is 10. For what minimal faults it has, they are far outweighed by the album’s greatness. A must own for metal fans in general.

(Review originally written for Heavy Metal Haven)