Without much of a noise in October BLIND GUARDIAN announced that they have complete their tenth album and we should wait it on January 30th. Then the months passed, it appeared the single 'Twilight of the Gods' but there was no loud campaign for the album. And when it finally appears a few weeks ago it caught us absolutely unprepared for the musical feast that the Germans are collected under the name 'Beyond the Red Mirror'.

I love BLIND GUARDIAN since 1993 when I heard them for the first time. And I mention this only because I know many old fans of the band and I heard their shocked comments when they first played the album. It is hard to think over these 60 minutes of music if you keep staring in the past of the band. Of any band. Because in 'Beyond the Red Mirror' BLIND GUARDIAN have plied so much music that from your first encounter you may lose your head. It is like you are in a big gallery filled with pieces of art and you want to pass them over for an hour, without looking all the details.

You listen to the album and you clash into every next massive of music, not from song to song but from detail to detail in each one of them.

In 'Beyond the Red Mirror' there are no common heavy metal. There are no repetitive riffs, nor jolly melodies that run throughout the whole song, they lack of catchy choruses. No radio hits either. And somewhere in the middle of 'At the Edge of Time' I realized that the album has actually been recorded not as a contemporary heavy metal record but. No, the orchestrations are not dominant; they don't overcome the record the two classical orchestras nor the three choirs that BLIND GUARDIAN has worked with. The songs themselves are built from many musical parts that interlace and build up to form the monolithic body of each one of them.

When you reach this conclusion you stop looking for the direct impact and you let the beauty of the album to dunk you inside and to follow every thread of its opulent entirety. While many heavy metal bands close themselves for month and they try to fit orchestrations to their music, that simply follow the guitar lines, BLIND GUARDIAN have created gigantic opus and they have done it so naturally. You can easy imagine that 'Beyond the Red Mirror' is born without any pressure - the album is the logical growing of the four as musicians and shows you where are now BLIND GUARDIAN on their way as artists.

There is one more thing that makes 'Beyond the Red Mirror' wonderful. BLIND GUARDIAN have turned to the story of maybe the favorite of most of their fans (I include myself) 'Imaginations from the Other Side' (1995) and they continue exactly where they stopped 20 years ago. Don't try to find music parallels because the bond is in the concept and in the lyrics.

The story again tells for the worlds of science fiction and fantasy, for the links between them that have been broken down with time and only one has remained - the red mirror that should be found at any cost. And the musical background is more than brilliant. The songs bear that recognizable signature of Blind Guardian with speedy parts, melodic passages, furious guitars, epic and choirs, reminding at some moments to the debut of Demons & Wizards and Hansi sings so inspiring throughout the whole album.

There is no doubt that BLIND GUARDIAN are the biggest name of the fantasy metal scene today and 'Beyond the Red Mirror' is a magnificent album. Album that requires and gives much. So just listen and don't try to headbang.