This came out in 1999 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Four words you don’t hear very much anymore: Heavy metal concept album.
So give Teutonic terrors Blind Guardian extra points for donning their medieval garb and rumbling forth with the high-concept sword-and-sorcery slamfest Nightfall in Middle-Earth. And what a concept: Based on J.R.R. Tolkein’s Silmarillion, the operatic opus comes complete with Middle-Earth minstrelry, sylvan sound effects and castrati harmonies worthy of Queen. Still, amid the complex, Yes-does-2112 majesty, there’s enough metal mayhem to make you raise a flagon of mead. Cue the frolicking little people and lower the Stonehenge model …
