Iced Earth

Forostar said:
You can't be spoiled as long as you don't play audio.
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I don't want my first listen of the album to be spoiled by any preconceptions of how good or bad it is. I'd rather make my own judgements than know what others think about it beforehand, so I'm waiting for the CD to arrive in the post before I listen to it. :)

However, I know what the general options will be anyway. Night Prowler will think it's awesome even if it's 80 minutes of Jon Schaffer farting. You, Mosh and The Flash will say that Stu is trying to sound like Barlow and that the album would sound better if Barlow was on vocals. LooseCannon and Perun will refuse to listen to it because Jon is obsessed with conspiracy theories.
 
Black Wizard said:
You, Mosh and The Flash will say that Stu is trying to sound like Barlow and that the album would sound better if Barlow was on vocals.
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Well, I am not so focused on Barlow as some are over here. My favourite IE studio album is without him. I will listen to some songs on internet, but certainly will not buy it, or at least not without checking some of it out.
 
"Democide" is an absolute faceripper of a song! I think most of the album will take some time to grow on me if it is going to... most of the album is made up of slower, more atmospheric songs that will take more time to fully absorb. Oh, and I don't get the negativity towards "Among The Living Dead" on here, that song has a monster chorus and solo! :)
 
Forostar said:
Well, I am not so focused on Barlow as some are over here. My favourite IE studio album is without him. I will listen to some songs on internet, but certainly will not buy it, or at least not without checking some of it out.
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Right, I'm not sure where that came from. Yea I really don't like that Stu is trying to sound like Barlow, but I think it would sound better if he'd just use his natural voice, which sounds awesome. Also, if the music wasn't so dull and uninspired, it might not even be a problem. Even Barlow wouldn't be able to save Dystopia. He definitely didn't save Crucible of Man.
 
Oh I'd agree with that. The Something Wicked albums are the two worst things IE ever did IMO. Dystopia at least had some okay moments like the title track, V, and Anguish of Youth.
 
I find "Framing Armageddon" to be a far superior album to TCOM. FA is overlong, and the riff/melody recycling on some songs is annoying, but I love over half of that album. Whereas TCOM has less than a handful of great tracks.
 
It's been such a long time since I listened to either of them, but I remember the last song on Crucible being the only song of the entire duo that I enjoyed. So I suppose Crucible gets the edge for me. :p

I suppose when the survivor starts, I'll have to give them another go. :puke:
 
Forostar said:
I feel exactly the opposite, Sara. You might want to read some opposition here. ;-P
http://forum.maidenfans.com/threads/iced-earth.15485/page-52
(starts somewhere on the 2nd half of the page)
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Oh, I know some people disagree with me about that. :p TCOM seems to come in for harsher criticism as a whole though, from what I've seen. Which is surprising, as Matt Barlow is on it. I love 4 songs on TCOM: "The Revealing" (this should have been fleshed out into a full song though), "I Walk Alone", "Divide/Devour", and "Come What May". The rest of the album was very forgettable to me...
 
Well I guess that supports what I said earlier. Both albums were doomed from the start, not even Barlow could save them. :p
 
Well, the problem by that point, was Jon Schaffer himself. I found it ironic that after so many fans had wanted Ripper out, and Matt reinstated, that when that actually did happen, the band recorded their worst album. Both Ripper albums were superior to it, particularly TGB. TCOM sounded like a tired album, and I think that's because at that point, Jon himself was tired. He had burnt himself out, and had suffered some personal crisis during that time, he just wasn't in the right headspace to create a great album. "Dystopia", whilst not quite up their with their true classics, was a huge improvement on the previous album...
 
Totally agreed. I think a lot of people make the mistake of crediting IE's greatness in the 90's to Barlow. The song writing had a lot to do with it. Remember, they already wrote one classic album (that many consider their best) before Barlow joined. Even Burnt Offerings doesn't have Barlow singing to his full potential yet, despite being a great album. That's why I say Barlow can't save this band, the songs aren't going to magically improve with Barlow.

And yea, as bad as it is, Dystopia at least sounds like Iced Earth.
 
Yep, I am a massive Matt Barlow fan, but to me Ripper earned his place in the band, and any poor material recorded during his tenure, I blamed Jon for that, not Ripper. Most fans thought Ripper was the problem, but for me, he never was. Tim's vocal performance on the Gettysburg Trilogy is amongst my faves of all time, so he had really proved himself to me. Jon caved into fan pressure, and fired Ripper, but TCOM was the final proof that Ripper was never the problem. It is true that the band had already recorded one classic album before Matt joined, and the debut was brought down purely by having a very poor vocalist on it. I can understand why Matt was so loved, even I myself was/am a big fan of his vocals. But I never allowed that to cloud my judgement of Ripper, or the quality of the music made after Matt's departure.

And "Dystopia" is far from being a "bad" album... :p
 
Yea Ripper really nailed it on TGB, which had some great moments. I don't really like his singing on FA, though. I feel that sometimes his screams were too whiny. But he really belts it out on Gettysburg.

Sara said:
And "Dystopia" is far from being a "bad" album... :p
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Well that's where we disagree :p
 
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