Tokyo Tales

Time to go back to the land of the Rising Sun with today's post. Japan as I said is a running theme through these posts. Power Metal, something I don't think I've really posted a whole lot of here. The mention of it brings to mind fantasy, Tolkien, and massive festival sing a longs. So lets go to where it started from, Germany. The Germans have pretty much perfected the art of Power Metal, churning out bands since the mid 80's. May as well be as the official music of the country. So let's pay homage to it with of the original German Power Metal bands. Blind Guardian tend to be the flag bearers for the genre. Doing it since '86, the band consistently delivers epic Power Metal. Although the band did start out like the other Metal import from Germany, as a Speed Metal band called Lucifer's Heritage. In fact the roots of the band go back to '84.

The band has officially released two Live albums thus far. I'm gonna focus on the first one. 1993 saw the release of 'Tokyo Tales'. Ten years later in '03 the band would release the Double Live record, 'Live'. The latter record is a more career spanning effort. While 'Tokyo Tales' focuses on their bands first four albums. The album is 12 tracks of epic sounding Metal. Simply showcasing what this still fairly young band could accomplish. The album was recorded over two nights in Tokyo. The first night was at Koseinenkin Hall in Tokyo on December 4, 1992 and the second night was at the NHK Hall in Tokyo on December 6, 1992. Japan in the mid 90's couldn't get enough Metal apparently. Nothing's really changed there either.

There's something about Power Metal in a Live setting that just makes you wanna put your arm over some random stranger and belt along to epic courses about Tolkien. It reminds you that being a Metal head is like being part of a bigger community and being part of something great.

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