Awesome / Blind Guardian

• "And Then There Was Silence," both the studio version and live. Just to elaborate: We're talking about the longest song coming from a band known for Epic Rocking. It alone took up half the recording time that went into A Night at the Opera, and Hansi himself considers it to be the greatest song he's ever written.
• From that same album: "Punishment Divine." Easily the darkest and angriest song Blind Guardian ever wrote.
• "Time Stands Still (At the Iron Hill)" is Crowning Music of Awesome about a literary Moment of Awesome. Just try not to stand up and scream the chorus;
  LORD OF ALL NOLDOR!
• The first live album, Tokyo Tales. Hansi gets the crowd to wholeheartedly sing the intro for Journey Through the Dark on first try and they've only just begun. When you get this kind of audience participation, especially with addressing them in an unfamiliar language (most of the crowd probably found his English hard to understand...) you know you're a freaking god on the stage. Bands that have been in the business for years can't wrap a familiar audience around their fingers like that.
  • Or all live albums. Your choice.
• When the audience takes over your song... you know you've been immortalized. Observe here, here and ESPECIALLY here.
• Wheel of Time. Just...Wheel of Time.
• Valkyries is absolutely awesome, despite being not one of their more well known songs.
• Presenting Hansi as the voice of Emperor Palpatine.
• "Grand Parade" from Beyond the Red Mirror is very much worthy of its name.
• "Sacred Worlds" does a pretty good job capturing a feeling of a warrior preparing for war. No wonder it was used for the opening of Sacred 2.
  War, it's now or never
  We shall stand together!
  One by one
  this world is sacred

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