The riff might as well have stopped playing entirely while he sings. He completely blows it out with the volume of his vocals. However, when Hansi comes in, he overwhelms the riff that was being played.
Around a minute and a half into the song, the guitarists are throwing out a really cool riff with Hansi bursting in intermittently. There is no clearer example of the messed up songwriting experience this album presents than the closer "And Then There Was Silence." Blind Guardian doesn't have many double digit length tracks, and if this one was written during the sessions of another record, it might have been a masterful effort, but as is, it's severely lacking. Even if every element of the band is firing from all cylinders, if those cylinders are never firing at the same time, the experience will never be optimal. The album also lacks the depth and variety in its songwriting that "Nightfall in Middle-Earth" had. Now, Hansi is one of the best of the best, so this could be a LOT worse than it is, but there is a bigger problem to this than just what is audible in the final mix of the record. If Hansi is singing, the guitars are taking a backseat.
Hansi DOMINATES the mix from start to finish, with the guitars only really being noticeable during solos or intro/transition pieces where he isn't singing. Hansi and the guitars are rarely ever balanced well across the entire record. "A Night at the Opera's" biggest flaw, which anyone who reviews this album will point out is that a lot of the guitar is really buried. As one of my favorite drummers, it was sad that he left, but the band had to move on. Also, this album would be masterful drumming guru Thomen Stauch's last album with the band, citing disagreements in the direction the band was heading. Now, let me be clear that I still think this album is HANDS DOWN the worst album from their full on power metal era (at time of writing), but it also certainly isn't as bad as my first impression was. I absolutely hated "A Night at the Opera." However, after each listen, I've grown to like it significantly more. If you asked me to review this album when I was first getting into metal as a genre, I'd have given this album a scathing review. Blind Guardian's seventh studio album "A Night at the Opera" is certainly a black sheep in their discography.
0 kommentar(er)
