Blind Guardian Twilight Orchestra Legacy Of The Dark Lands

Undisputed kings of symphonic power metal BLIND GUARDIAN have been beavering away at a brand new project, and it is finally here for all to enjoy. But know this, true believers: the new project isn’t the same epic power metal band we know and love. It is, instead, the BLIND GUARDIAN TWILIGHT ORCHESTRA. It’s a whole new thing, and in collaboration with celebrated German fantasy author Markus Heitz, they have brought to light a fantasy tale of epic proportions in the form of Legacy of the Dark Lands…

Seven years after Beyond The Red Mirror and almost three after the orchestral opus Blind Guardian Twilight Orchestra: Legacy of the Dark Lands, Blind Guardian invites you to their personal twilight of the gods. "After Beyond The Red Mirror and Legacy Of The Dark Lands, we knew we couldn't push the orchestral side of Blind Guardian any further," vocalist Hansi Kürsch says. The new directive while creating The God Machine was fairly straight-forward but ever so welcome: "Less orchestration, more punch." In 2022, the opulent arrangements and powerful choirs still exist; yet they are used in a much more selective, focused and resonant manner. The God Machine marks another pinnacle in Blind Guardian's impressive discography by not attempting to pretend it is still the nineties yet instead successfully relying on the muscle memory of this period.

Blind Guardian emerged from western Germany in the mid-'80s with a style that fused gothic- and fantasy-tinged European power metal with the velocity and technical precision of speed metal. Since debuting in 1988 with the thrashy and raw Battalions of Fear, the band has become an institution in power, progressive, and neo-classical metal circles, delivering genre classics Nightfall in Middle-Earth (1998), A Night at the Opera (2002), and A Twist in the Myth (2006), plus orchestral works such as Legacy of the Dark Lands (2019) that skillfully pair fantastical narratives with ace musicianship.