Blind Guardian is one of the few Metal bands that I still enjoy an awful lot.
It is also the first Metal band that I was introduced to, there might be some corellation between the two.
Something that bothered me about a lot of Metal bands is the “forced dark image” (for lack of a better term) that many bands seem to be after.
Blind Guardian is not like that. They are a bunch of Pen and Paper RPG dudes, they read fantasy books and write songs about them afterwards.
They have songs about A Song of Ice and Fire, The Dark Tower, Lord of the Rings, and these guys did that waaaay before any of that was “cool”.
For the 15 year old Garret, that was mind-blowing.
Their songs are a nice mix of Melodic and Power/Speed.
I also loved their cover arts.
Nightfall in Middle Earth
Lúthien dancing in front of Morgoth. Album covers are sort of a dying art it would seem.
~Garret