A Night at the Opera (Blind Guardian album)
| A Night at the Opera | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blind Guardian studio album | ||||
|
Publication |
March 4, 2002 |
|||
| Label (s) |
Virgin / EMI (worldwide) Century Media (USA) |
|||
|
Title (number) |
10 |
|||
|
running time |
65:29 |
|||
| occupation |
|
|||
|
||||
|
Studio (s) |
||||
|
||||
A Night at the Opera is the seventh studio album by the German metal band Blind Guardian . It was released on March 1, 2002 and recorded and mixed at Twilight Hall Studios (Germany) from October 2000 to December 2001.
background
The music was written by Olbrich and Kürsch, Thomen Stauch was also involved in The Soulforged and Harvest of Sorrow was composed by Siepen, Kürsch and Stauch. The choir was taken over by Rolf Köhler, Thomas Hackmann, Olaf Senkbeil and Billy King, who have been active for Blind Guardian for over 10 years and recorded their background vocals in the Hammer Music Studios. Oliver Holzwarth took part as bass player on the album, which can already be heard on the previous album Nightfall in Middle-Earth . Matthias Wiesner also took part again as a keyboard player . This time the cover picture was drawn by Paul Raymond Gregory.
The lyrics on the album no longer revolve around Tolkien's literature as intensely . Only Harvest of Sorrow takes up this topic. Rather, biblical texts such as in Precious Jerusalem and Sadly Sings Destiny and the Greek epic Iliad in And Then There Was Silence and Under the Ice are dealt with. Punishment Divine is about the life of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and his madness.
The album title is an allusion to Queen 's album of the same name, A Night at the Opera from 1975. According to Marcus Siepen, Queen's music had a great influence on the band.
Track list
- Precious Jerusalem - 6:21
- Battlefield - 5:37
- Under the Ice - 5:44
- Sadly Sings Destiny - 6:04
- The Maiden and the Minstrel Knight - 5:30
- Wait for an Answer - 6:30
- The Soulforged - 5:18
- Age of False Innocence - 6:05
- Punishment Divine - 5:45 am
- And Then There Was Silence - 14:05
The CD was released in seven different versions, six of which have a bonus track :
- For Argentina: La Cosecha del Dolor
- For Germany: Without a bonus song
- For Great Britain: Harvest of Sorrow (original version of the single)
- For France: Moisson de Peine
- For Italy: Frutto del Buio
- For Japan: Harvest of Sorrow (acoustic version)
- For Spain: Mies del dolor
Single releases
The single And Then There Was Silence was released in November 2001 and served as a heat-up for the album. As a bonus track, Harvest of Sorrow is another release from the album on the maxi CD. A video of Born in a Mourning Hall is also on the sound carrier. A picture disc was also created. The single came to # 41 in the German charts.
review
Reviews
The cover artwork was seen by some fans as an imposition, since this is the first album since Follow the Blind is where Andreas Marschall has not taken the title picture.
successes
The album reached # 5 on the longplay charts in Germany.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Interview with Marcus Siepen on February 27, 2002, in The Metal Observer .
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from January 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ http://laut.de/lautstark/cd-reviews/b/blind_guardian/a_night_at_the_opera/index.htm
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of February 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive )