TALES FROM THE TWILIGHT WORLD

Tales From the Twilight World catches Blind Guardian in the midst of their transformation from a power metal-flavoured hybrid of speed and thrash metal to masters of purebred power metal; to a large extent, more or less every album they have put out since has followed the lead set by this one, which set the blueprint for their sound.

With lyrical subjects drawn from a range of genre fiction touchstones, the album is the band's most confident of their first three, and whilst at a first listen it's hard not to get into the spirit of things, on repeated listens some parts become increasingly trite and irritating (in particular, the chanted refrain in Tommyknockers is just unbearable). This is the point where Blind Guardian became a decidedly acquired taste, so if you have the taste for them then good for you, give it a go - but if you find it falls flat, perhaps they aren't the power metal crew for you.