Review by Rexorcist for Blind Guardian - Imaginations From the Other Side (1995)

At the time of Blind Guardian's conception, they were just another speed band trying to make it big in a German scene.  There was no way in hell they could compete with Helloween, who defined the power metal sound.  This isn't to say they were bad, but they couldn't hold one of their LOTR-scented candles to them or Running Wild.  But thanks to them and Symphony X, the classical/symphonic influence was no longer a lyrical thing.  Albeit, Symphony X got right to it with their debut, and Blind Guardian slowly built it up from Tales from the Twilight World.  Just before the band went almost full-symphonic, there was that transition from speed to fantasy: Tales from the Twilight World, Somewhere Far Beyond, and one of their two most iconic albums: Imaginations from the Other Side.

Imaginations delivers all of the goods a true Blind Guardian fan should want from them: the speed, the symphony, the heaviness and the pop-culture poetics.  The title track alone lets you know just how hard these guys will thrash without being an extreme band, but at the same time the heavy symphonic sound is exactly like something you'd expect from a "dark fantasy" film like The Dark Crystal.  Truly epic without overdoing it.  And Hansi Kursch, as a singer, absolutely refuses to control himself, which helps the heaviness a lot more than it hinders.  And thankfully, not every song is just another excuse to be as heavy as possible at a 180 beat rhythm that power metal fans obsess over (thanks a lot, Rhapsody).  There are moments of true poetic focus, such as the minstrelized "A Past and Future Secret" and the perfectly placed grand finale, "And the Story Ends."  And melodically speaking (which is most important for the so-called subgenre "melodic power metal"), most of these songs fall into the best of Blind Guardians melodies, along with the majority of their near equal follow-up, Nightfall in Middle-Earth.  But the edge this album has on Nightfall IS in fact edge itself.  Nightfall pioneered the symphonic sound by sacrificing most of the speed edge, so it sets up a new era of Blind Guardian, forsaking the speed until the singles for 2022's The God Machine was released.

Imaginations provides the ultimate Blind Guardian experience, perfectly balancing the best of both worlds in the best of all ways.  Key tracks like the title (my personal favorite power metal song), "Bright Eyes" and "The Script for My Requiem" may be among the best BG songs, but there is no such thing as filler on this masterpiece.  With Imaginations from the Other Side, Blind Guardian proved that they could stand with the greats like Helloween and Running Wild, and that the brilliant Somewhere Far Beyond wasn't a one-time success or a fluke.  This is the peak of power metal.