Blackmore's Night - Fires at Midnight
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Free Music Notes for Fires at Midnight
Free Music Review: Ritchie is back!
Hit: 4 Stars
After a long, long time, Blackmore's Night are back with this powerful album. It will please all the fans of the rock guitarist Blackmore, as he uses his Fender alot in the new album unlike the previous two. The song 'Benzai-Ten' (can anyone tell me what that means?) begins with a chinese-sounding riff (is it a mandolin?), the whole song has a nice eastern taste. The songs 'Written In The Stars', 'Fires At Midnight' and 'Village On The Sand' are great songs, somehow Ritchie managed to combine his new style of songs with candice, with his rock guitar playing producing a new style, only Ritchie could do that. 'The Times They ARe A Changin' is a Bob Dylan cover rearranged in renaissence style. I haven't heard the original but from what I heard I'm anxious to find it. The only draw back to this album is a song or two that are somewhat... sleepy! But overall it's the best of Blackmore's Night albums so far, or at least I think so.Free Music Review: A good third album
Hit: 4 Stars
Fires at Midnight is the third album from Blackmore's Night. It once again combines the beautiful vocals of Candice Night with the amazing musical ability of Ritchie Blackmore (from Deep Purple). However, this album is a move away from their previous two. Instead of doing both straight Renaissance traditional and new songs that have a traditional sound, they have started doing combinations of traditional melodies, re-worked with more electric sounds, and new lyrics. However, fans of the first two albums will not be disappointed. The music is powerful and I am starting to find myself humming along, always a good sign. Overall, I think that while the new style will take some getting used to, I will eventually come to like it as much as the others. I think that others will do the same.
Free Music Review: Good effort - no surprises.
Hit: 4 Stars
I could hardly wait to get this CD in my hands, having played the other 2 Blackmore's Night CDs I have over and over. While this is a worthy effort, nothing seemed to jump out at me as memorable, surprising, or intriguing. There are a few places where Blackmore's instrumental riffs caught my attention, echoes of Deep Purple from my youth, yes indeed, but again, nothing that I couldn't get out of my head.
I like the CD, am glad I bought it, will play it many times, I'd just hoped, as Oliver Twist did, for 'more'.
Free Music Review: The Fires are Burning!
Hit: 4 Stars
The third album by Blackmore's Night was worth waiting for. My personal favorite on this album is "Hanging Tree", a song with beautiful music and well written lyrics. The cover of Dylan's "The times they are a changin'" is done with a Medieval flair. The mpg video of the Dylan cover was entertaining. (Did I actually see Blackmore smile?) All in all, a great effort that proves that the master still lives.Free Music Review: (3.5 stars) Most Good, Some Mediocre, Nothing Brilliant...
Hit: 3 Stars
Being my first BN disc, I was sort of expecting one thing but got the other. BN's latest album is mostly a mixture of slow medieval medley's and some more modern light rock and flares of pop. Being predominantly angled towards a more middle ages approach in the reality sense and not in the fantasy sense, don't be expecting any atmospheric keyboard arrangements or lushful ambiences. This is all finger picked guitar/sitar driven music w/ softly sung female fronted vocals, and the occasional horns, flutes, etc. Coming from a heavy metal fan's perspective, this may seem a bit biased, but I could really appreciate any type of music, be it metal or classical (as long as it's not hip hop).
Well, there were some good moments on the album and I would say that out of 16 tracks (all approxiemately around the 3-5 minute mark) I really can only listen to about half the album when I'm in the mood for it, but when it's just for a quick spin, there are only about 3 really good songs on this. We start off pretty well w/ the opener "written in the stars" where Candice (lead vocals) opens up w/ slow singing for about a minute then giving way to a percussion-lead rhythm based song which is lacking somewhat in melody, but pulls off an OK job for opening an album. The Bob Dylan "Time are a-changin'" remake I very much enjoyed, but then again BN didn't write the song. A few mediocre tracks follow but eventually the title track "Fires at Midnight" is one that can be spun again and again granted the chorus w/ it's very beautiful main melody doesn't get on your nerves only b/c it is simply repeated 1 too many times w/in the song. This is easily the best track on the record. Good songs follow this track including the melodic and somber "Hanging Tree" and "Mid-winter's Night." I especially loved "Storm." it's fast and upbeat rhythms and chorus melody really gave this mostly soft and slow album some life - 2nd best track on the album and one I'm sure any folk rock fan will enjoy.
A few songs you really must take w/ a grain of salt, they are good (example: "All because of You") but may come off as a bit corny and poppish for those in the mood for something darker and more aggressive, but stil good songs nonetheless. There are also a couple of acoustic guitar driven soft instrumentals- one of which I enjoyed more than the other ("Praetorius"), kind of short to really appreciate though.
The ender "Village of the Sand" is another more upbeat song w/ poppish flares but still something that'll get your head moving -good song.
What brings this album down in my opinion is the sub-standard songwriting, lack of progression, predictability, and a handful of the songs on this album just being kind of boring and uninspired, like the phony sounding horns that feel tacked on a lot of times. The good songs on the album even have some sub-standard songwriting, but it's essentially their catchy yet undiverse melodies which luckily make them good. Lyrics are for the most part mediocre, typical and are repeated way too often in some songs, namely the title track. Track 4, "Home Again" has a medieval-pub-beer-in-hand type of chorus chant (sung by candice and a few background male singers) and would be a good song, well, in medieval times. I simply found it dry and plain. "Crowing of the King" has a faux horn in the main melody that's just too cheesy and bland to be any good, almost sounding like a childish nursery rhyme. In other words, very predictable.
Overall, this album has most good moments and skippable moments, but really nothing brilliant or mindblowing. This is one of those you have to listen to more than a few times to get into.
I did enjoy this disc but it's really more of something more or less you have to be in the mood for to play from start to end. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who will love this disc, but they'd have to be really into folky music to. I guess I wanted more of something that'll create some sort of medieval/fantasy atmosphere, but istead what I got was something flatter and more down to earth than anything else. I've heard BN's earlier works to be more towards that inclination, so I won't close the book on them altogether, this album wasn't bad, just somewhat mediocre. If you wanna give this band a shot, I would suggest sampling this first.