The Twilight World: Discover the first novel from the iconic filmmaker Werner Herzog

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I dislike thrash metal. Sure, you can catch me with a little Metal Church playing sometimes but for the most part I’m not the biggest fan of the genre. Knowing this you can probably tell that I don’t like Blind Guardian’s early albums too much. This is true. This album being reviewed is their third, and more importantly, their first to incorporate power metal. Yeah, the thrash is still there, but it’s made more melodic, and Blind Guardian as we know them is beginning to form. This is probably my favorite Blind Guardian album. His lyrics also possess considerable prowess. Hansi is a true story teller. He puts in the fantasy not to make it cover up an underlying moral. He's like King Diamond. He wants to tell a story for the most part with his songs. Though these songs probably do have a moral to them (one that I have not figured out) in their lyrics, for the most part Herr Kursch seems like he just wants to tell a story and he does good at that. On the flip side though, it makes the lyrics really seem rather mindless and without a clear focus. HERZOG: Well, there was so much evidence for him that he accumulated that it's almost like a religious belief system that he created. And we have to ask ourselves, how do we believe in, too, let's say, the belief systems of a crazy sect? People do believe in it, and they live their lives according to the dogma. Filmmaker Herzogdraws on the true story of a Japanese officer who patrolled the Filipino jungle for nearly three decades after WWII, unaware the war had ended, in his fascinating debut novel . . .Onoda shares with the director’s filmic protagonists a fierce will and singular perspective. This will whet the reader’s appetite for a film version.” —Publishers Weekly

Dopo la visita al santuario, ci fermammo a conversare in un parco fino a tarda notte. Era stato un sonnambulo, per tutti quegli anni, o aveva sognato, allora, l’oggi, l’adesso? Spesso, a Lubang, si era posto questa domanda. Non c’era nessuna prova che quando era sveglio fosse sveglio, e nessuna prova che quando sognava stesse sognando. Il crepuscolo del mondo. Le formiche, quando per ragioni misteriose si fermano, muovono le loro antenne. Fanno sogni profetici. Le cicale gridano all’universo. Nel terrore delle notti, un cavallo dagli occhi incandescenti fumava sigari. ” Wer jeden Morgen und jeden Abend sein Herz prüft und dadurch fähig wird, so zu Leben, als wäre sein Körper schon tot, den macht dieser Weg frei. Er wird sich nie etwas zuschulden kommen lassen und wird auch in seinem Gewerbe erfolgreich sein." (Übersetzung hier.) On "Follow the Blind," a big takeaway was the growth it had between it and the debut. Blind Guardian's third album "Tales from the Twilight World" (which I will shorten to just "Twilight Word" mostly moving forward) has even more growth between it and "Follow the Blind." It's a tough call to say if this was their transition album from speed metal to power metal, or if it'd take one more album to get there. For my money, I'd still call "Twilight World" a decidedly speed metal album with a lot of power metal hints and elements throughout it. Where "Follow the Blind" had the smallest of hints of what we'd come to expect of Blind Guardian, "Twilight World" is really the album that firmly establishes all of that. Ne "Il crepuscolo del mondo", Herzog concentra l'obiettivo della sua macchina da presa narrativa sull'ufficiale giapponese Hiroo Onoda.This is Blind Guardian's final offering as a speed metal band. Some would argue this is Blind Guardian's first true power metal album. Then again that is said about every single release before it (Battalions of Fear, Follow The Blind). All three of these albums have power metal elements but the speed metal really prevails more then the power metal for the most part. On Tales From the Twilight World, speed metal once again prevails over power metal. All in all, the album is pretty good. It shows Blind Guardian's dark, powerful, and spirited approach to metal further evolving and the progressive elements beginning to show more and more into the music. Though it took me time to get into this album (as it did with any Blind Guardian album that I own) and there are several things about the album that I do not like, I have truly grown to appreciate Tales From the Twilight Hall as the final offering of one era of Blind Guardian and one that highlighted the beginning of another nicely. The men were constantly on the move, building and abandoning crude huts. Every sign of civilization that blew in - a newspaper, a pornographic magazine, a piece of chocolate bar – was assumed to be a trap. Sometimes they were right, because the last man, his last comrade, was shot in an ambush by Filipino soldiers. In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and would meet many times, talking for hours and together unraveling the story of Onoda's long war. This album is where BG try to find a new path in the metal genre. as an experemental album, we should expect some great, some good, and some bad, and thats what we get.

Just like Follow the Blind was a complete improvement over the debut, Tales From the Twilight World is a complete improvement over Follow the Blind. The solos, the choruses, the atmosphere, all of that is still here, and while the songs aren't as thrashy as they were on Follow the Blind, they are definitely more upbeat and epic. The overall upbeatness is comparable to Helloween's Keeper of the Seven Keys. While I enjoy Blind Guardian's more prominent and acclaimed works like "Somewhere Far Beyond" and "Nightfall in Middle-Earth", this album is, at least to me, unmatchable. While being a transitional album in the band's discography (the more recognizable clear sound is not yet developed, while the rawness of "Battalions of Fear" and "Follow the Blind" is gradually fading), it offers some of the band's best material, and some of their most epic, remarkable songs, at the same time incorporating all beloved elements of Blind Guardian's music. One slight flaw is that Hansi's vocals are a bit dragging at times. This is neither the NWOBHM-ish charm of the debut, the aggression of Follow the Blind or Imaginations, nor the classicism of A Night at the Opera. Nonetheless, his performance is far from incompetent. Oh, and his accent is hilarious. "Beyond the reelms I've been", haha. Herzog es cineasta. Uno muy poético. Con "Crepúsculo del mundo", ahora es novelista. Esta es la primera, antes ya deslumbró con el diario de rodaje "Conquista de lo inútil". Ahora usa la ficción para narrar un hecho real: el soldado japonés Hiroo Onoda que durante veinte y cinco años creyó que aún seguía en la guerra, escondido en la selva de una isla filipina, desde la que continuó utilizando tácticas de guerrilla para repeler los intentos de búsqueda de su rendición, puesto que la Segunda Guerra Mundial ya había acabado, pero él no lo creía. Have you ever heard the name Hiroo Onoda? This is a fictionalized story based on Onoda’s 29 years of hiding in the mountainous jungle on Lubang Island in the Philippines, thinking that Japan was still fighting WW II. Onoda and five men were left behind by retreating Japanese forces in 1944.

On The Go

Tra le canne che ondeggiano lentamente scorge una piccola bandiera giapponese. Onoda alza con molta cautela il suo binocolo, ormai consumato dai molti anni trascorsi nella giungla. ”