Almost four decades into their career, the bards in Blind Guardian remain at the forefront of the European power metal scene. Their 1988 debut album ‘Battalions of Fear’ made some serious waves on the underground scene with a well-balanced combination of speed and power metal on the one hand and classic elements on the other. The following year they introduced orchestral parts for the first time on ‘Follow the Blind’. Produced by Fleming Rasmussen of Metallica fame, ‘Imaginations from the Other Side’ (1995) was a landmark album for them. Their renewed collaboration on ‘Nightfall in Middle Earth’, an album grafted on JRR Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, helped them to at last conquer the US and in 2015 they dropped a sequel with the concept album ‘Beyond the Red Mirror’. Since 2010 they’ve included more progressive metal elements in their work, resulting amongst others in a successful collaboration with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra on 2019’s ‘Legacy of the Dark Lands’. Their most recent outing ‘The God Machine’ (2022) is vintage Blind Guardian: thrashy power metal with dual guitar leads, rasping vocals and excellent orchestrations. (#GMM24)
