Blind Guardian - A Night At The Opera (2002)

The title A Night At The Opera has been good to me.  It is the name of a great Marx Brothers film (which is one of my favourite movies of all time), and also a great Queen album (which is one of the best of the seventies), so now Blind Guardian adopts the name, with their first release in four years.
They go for a more progessive style here as they focus on such topics as Jesus' tempation in the desert ("Precious Jerusalem") , Galileo Galilei ("Age Of False Innocence"), Jesus Christ again, this time His crucifixion ("Sadly Sings Destiny") and the Dragon Lance books ("Soulforged").
In truth, this can't match the band's best work; it's a wild and restless listen, with all sorts of overdubs and instrumentation thrown in, but there's still much to like, and more listens can only be of benefit.
When I was reviewing Blind Guardian's earlier albums, I eventually came to the conclusion that they were my favourite power metal band at the time. Since then, I've fallen in love with the likes of Rhapsody and Freedom Call, so they've "taken the crown" in my mind (small as the crown is) from Hansi and his German friends, but they do remain one of the best at what they do - I just prefer albums like SOMEWHERE FAR BEYOND and NIGHTFALL IN MIDDLE-EARTH.

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