Guardians of the Blind (Battalions Of Fear - Blind Guardian)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Battalions Of Fear - Blind Guardian
Date:	16/01/06 (117 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Strong debut, some classic songs that are still played today

Disadvantages: Cheap production, undeveloped talent

Founded at a time when American thrash metal was at its peak, German band Battalions of Fear –re-naming themselves Blind Guardian shortly before releasing this album – would go on to become the leading band in European power metal.

Their debut is still a strong album, despite poor production quality and the undeveloped talents of the band members, combining the best thrash elements of early Metallica with the epic fantasy-inspired heavy metal of Germany’s Helloween and their offspring Gamma Ray. The nine tracks on Battalions of Fear are consistently strong, despite lacking the originality and splendour of the band’s later masterpieces such as ‘Somewhere Far Beyond,’ ‘Imaginations from the Other Side’ and ‘Nightfall in Middle-Earth.’

The main thing that stands out on this album is Hansi Kursch’s vocals, which are very clearly geared towards sounding as American as his pronounced European accent allows. It isn’t too distracting, and Kursch’s vocals take a while to get used to on any Blind Guardian album, even their later, more confident releases where his excellent singing voice performs unmasked. The use of keyboards is less prominent here, only really coming into play for unusual opening and instrumental sections, while the great guitar work shows signs of what will come later.

1. Majesty
2. Guardian of the Blind
3. Trial by the Archon
4. Wizard’s Crown
5. Run for the Night
6. The Martyr
7. Battalions of Fear
8. By the Gates of Moria
9. Gandalf’s Rebirth

The first album by Blind Guardian opens with a quiet and mysterious fairground type melody before exploding into ‘Majesty,’ a recognised Blind Guardian classic and clear favourite of the band. The guitar riffs here are all memorable, as is the solo – despite being performed at almost the same pitch as the melodic main riffs. Probably the best song on here, Majesty showcases everything the band has to offer at this early point in their career: great guitars, a nice ensemble chorus and the ability to craft a fairly lengthy song (in this case, over seven minutes) that maintains the listener’s interest throughout.

The rest of the album follows suit, all of the non-instrumental songs being fast and punchy ‘speed metal’ offerings that never descend into heaviness, the focus being on melody and strong verse-chorus structure. As is common for Blind Guardian, most of the choruses simply repeat the title over and over – the exception being ‘Wizard’s Crown,’ which could easily be misremembered as being called ‘Halloween.’ ‘Run for the Night’ wins the prize for the most hypnotic repeated chorus.

A little unusually, the album closes with two fairly short instrumentals, both coming in at under three minutes. The musical style isn’t too different from the rest of the album, the only real difference being an increased focus on the guitar which stands in for the vocals. ‘Trial by the Archon’ is an earlier instrumental of one and a half minutes that acts as an excellent introduction to ‘Wizard’s Crown’ and really enhances that song; listening to it alone, it seems to start too abruptly, so perhaps these two tracks should have been combined into one.

The album is very consistent, and at 40 minutes is just about the right length. ‘Battalions of Fear,’ while just as good as the rest of the album, suffers slightly from sounding quite similar as the final vocal song on here, and this isn’t helped by previous track ‘The Martyr’ which is perhaps the worst. ‘Run for the Night’ would later be re-released as a bonus track on Blind Guardian’s third album as a live song, and it works much better there with the less strained vocals.

I know fans of the genre who prefer the more simplistic, speedy sound of this album and its follow-up, the slightly better ‘Follow the Blind,’ and it’s not as if this album has faded into obscurity with the band’s increasing success. ‘Majesty,’ ‘Run for the Night’ and ‘Battalions of Fear’ all appear on the most recent live DVD, and don’t sound out of place alongside the newer material at all. It seems that Battalions of Fear suffers only due to its production and the band’s delivery, and offers some great fast metal anthems to compliment the extravagant overblown later work such as ‘A Night at the Opera.’

I’d recommend this album to fans of metal, but behind the other, more impressive Blind Guardian albums out there. If the limited fantasy themes put you off here, perhaps it would be wise to give later albums like ‘Nightfall in Middle-Earth’ a wide berth, which are Tolkien all the way.

Summary: Blind Guardian's first album, 1988