Review by SilentScream213 for Blind Guardian - Nightfall in Middle-Earth (1998)

Blind Guardian’s first full on epic concept album exclusively focused on Middle-Earth lore, and this one seemed to be a breakthrough for them. Overall, the style is a bit softer, focusing more on varied instrumentation (folk and classical acoustics, as well as some keys) and hyper anthemic gang vocal choruses. Power Metal is still the core here, but it’s more progressive and less aggressive, and plenty of songs stray from the genre entirely.

The meat of the album is very strong, compelling, passionate and catchy. The concept story is an added bonus, but the music is plenty entertaining without it, and the tracks totally stand on their own. Despite this, I will say it’s decidedly less to my taste than their more aggressive fare.

In order to make the album flow more like a story, Blind Guardian added short spoken word interludes between almost every track, and I gotta say… I do not think that was the play. The 11 regular tracks are great, but the TWENTY TWO total tracks just makes this ridiculously hard to listen to front to back. It also makes the album very difficult to rate. The main tracks are top quality as usual, but the segues are boring and ruin the flow. Unfortunately I cannot simply ignore them, and they make this probably my least favorite release they had done at the time.