Friday, September 9, 2022

Blood Tears, Blind Guardian

Today's Metal Friday is a cut off Nightfall in Middle-Earth by the great Blind Guardian.

"Blood Tears" is typical of the work on this album... fucking awesome. The tempo changes in this one...wow. At 1:33 the song transforms from an atmospheric and melodic medieval feel, to full-on mosh-pit. Then returns. There and back again.

Tolkien is on my brain a bit more than usual (JRRT never leaves this cranium) due to the recent Rings of Power, which I still haven't watched. Will I? I don't know, I'm feeling very apathetic about it all. I’m not a big TV watcher, but mainly I have no faith Amazon can recreate Tolkien's genius.

But I can say Blind Guardian channeled a bit of it, with Nightfall in Middle-Earth. Enjoy this bit of First Age storytelling. “Captured” and “Blood Tears” are about the capture of Maedhros, Morgoth’s chaining of the Elven hero by his wrist to a sheer cliff in the mountains of Thangorodrim, and his deliverance when Fingon hacks off his hand. Blind Guardian offers a moving look into the mind of Maedhros and the torment and pain he must have experienced:

And blood tears I cry

You've searched and you've found

Cut off your old friends hand


 

2 comments:

jason said...

That's a good one. You introduced me to BG (many) years ago when you posted about them. I read one of your posts and then mentioned them to a friend and we discovered they were coming to Denver in a few months and we saw them--great show in a small venue.

Brian Murphy said...

I'm still tickled I was able to introduce someone to the greatness of BG :). Nightfall in Middle-Earth is a stone-cold classic IMO.