Review Summary: Material is still turgid as with the previous one, but having Matt Barlow makes Iced Earth score bonus points...
Wicked. That's what we used to say about Iced Earth, you know? Wicked! Something Wicked! Mind you, if you did this, you'd just witnessed the release of Iced Earth's 1998 Something Wicked This Way Comes album, and even more likely you would be the kind of guy that fawned all over the vocals of this one dude called Matt Barlow. Well, this Matt guy, he sung really well during those days. He had this wide range with expressive emotions and the ability to use a variety of styles effectively. Then planes crashed into towers and Matt decided "y'know what, I'm gonna be a ***en cop" and his heart wasn't in the music anymore.
So Jon Schaffer, head honcho/boss/creator of the story, decided that the band needed a new vocalist. Enter Tim Ripper Owens (yes, that guy that also filled Rob Halford's shoes), and he sung really well. But people started yelling at Jon. It's what fans do who are really used to one sound. They yell really bad. Now, Tim Owens is a cool guy, and he really did his best. But the two records with him it seems that Schaffer's heart went with Barlow's somewhere, as two duds flowed forth from his pen: the albums henceforth known as The Glorious Burden and Framing Armageddon.
Then the fans yelled even louder when it was announced that Matt Barlow (wait, that same Matt that wanted to be a ***en cop?) was going to work with a band called Pyramaze. Schaffer, tired of all this *** about vocalists, decided to call his brother-in-law (because Matt is Jon's brother-in-law) and was like "Hey dude, hear you're singin' again, wanna come back to do this Iced Earth stuff again. I'm takin' flak from some morons who don't think the old vocalist is cool enough. I know it's actually 'cause I wrote ***ty material, but you wanna help me out?" So Matt said yes, and then he came back into the band.
But here's the issue with this record. Matt is a great vocalist and all. He sounds better than ever before, actually. But these songs, they were written before Matt came in. Now, the previous album's songwriting was, uh, to be fair, trash. So basically what you have is one god awesome vocalist with 15 songs that range from "okayish" to "godawful" to redundant. So basically Matt Barlow is trying to carry songs that either become good because HE sings on them, or songs that are now kinda mediocre instead of being plain
bad when Ripper sang on them.
And this is the other problem with Iced Earth. Schaffer used to write these riffs that galloped, you know? Like Iron Maiden's gallop, but on rhythm guitar instead of bass. Burnt Offerings was full of it. So was Dark Saga. But on this record, it's kinda like he stopped doing that. He was evidently tired of writing good songs, because previous albums would have five or six songs that thrashed your butt off; it used to be like power metal, but manlier and thrashier. You know, power metal minus the extreme gayness and with more actual power. On here, we have one song that sounds like that, and it's the 13th (!) song on the album. It's that Barlow is ***ing singing on this thing because with anyone else behind the mic, we'd all have drifted off and fallen asleep.
That said, there are many cool moments on this album, and almost all of them are courtesy of Matt. Crucify the King has one of the coolest choruses (LET ALL YOUR CHILDREN PRAY / YOU'VE WASHED THEIR SINS AWAY) ever, and its monstrous chug riff sounds like something Megadeth could have written. Divide Devour sees Matt adopting some rougher vocals that completely show why he is supposed to be in Iced Earth, and the fact that the song actually has tempo brings it up to Dark Saga level. And the bridge on closing seven-minute-monolith Come What May is a bit cheesy 80s hard rock, but Matt runs the whole gamut from mid-ranged vocals to superb high screams; a hallmark of a truly versatile singer.
Lyrically, it's par for the course power metal. The Something Wicked thing that Jon thought up is some semi-cool sci-fi story with some dude that rises to kill all of humanity. Humanity are actually aliens from outer space, and the true earthmen are called Setians. Then they kinda got eradicated and went into hiding and rose their chosen one to *** humanity up kinda. I mean, that's kinda cool, it's kinda Star Wars meets some Egyptian mythology (some cool eastern melodies pop up on for example Minions of the Watch), but it's also kinda silly when you're calling humanity a sad and pathetic race for not evolving. It's also kind of the easy way out, so instead of singing about cool things like comic books (Spawn), or hell (Dante's Inferno), we get some complex ***ty story where people die, there are prophecies and seers, and it isn't so far a stretch to imagine elves or other fantastic beings like that invading the earth and bringing Iced Earth to walking the fine line between power metal, the good version, and power metal, the extremely cheesy homoerotic version. Iced Earth are known for being non-homoerotic, so these silly lyrics seem rather laughable coming from someone with a voice as potent as Barlow's.
Overall, should you buy this album? Well, yeah, you should, because Matt Barlow is on it, and he has that god-given ability to bring a song to a whole new level. If you're a fan of the band, I'd still give it a shot to see if you can dig between all the slow plodding songs to find some gold. But for everyone else, it's gonna be a disappointing chore to sit through (thank god it's only 60 instead of 75 this time) the whole record. And it's kinda sad that it took a vocalist change to make Schaffer's songs any good, as albums like Night of the Stormrider show it's definitely possible for Schaffer to write good material independent of the vocalist. Let's hope that Schaffer learns from his mistakes next time, because Barlow shows there's life in this outfit yet; Schaffer just isn't tapping into the vat of material that makes Iced Earth great instead of the average power metal that this record is comprised of. In the meanwhile, enjoy the songs that do stick.
P.S. Jon: Intro songs are already uncool, and if they segue into the first real song, you can just tag it onto the beginning of the song and call it a whole track. That happens. But why is there an epilogue consisting of tribal drums and cello that does nothing to further the story? It's not necessary, it's not cool, and it doesn't help the silly concept record in any way. It's becoming tiring to see bands releasing concept records and use it as an excuse to write filler instead of good songs.
