ICED EARTH SURVIVOR 2018: Results -> A Question Of Heaven wins!

Are you satisfied with the results?

  • Total voters
    10
I know, but since I was already listening to the whole thing because of the 4 songs that are in the game, why not review the whole thing? :) I didn't listen to it much before anyway.

Anyway, almost done with Dark Saga review, then I'll (finally) update.
 
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Credits:
Jon Schaffer - rhythm guitar & vocals - 4th album with the band
Randall Shawver - lead guitar - 4th album with the band
Dave Abell - bass - 4th album with the band
Matt Barlow - vocals - 2nd album with the band
Mark Prator - drums - 1st album with the band

  1. Dark Saga - Unusually slow opening for an Iced Earth album... but it works. A genre switch from more (more) thrash to heavy metal is noticeable. Barlow carries this song and especially the chorus is awesome.
  2. I Died For You - This was the first IE song I've ever heard, and honestly I didn't like it at first. Sad! While the studio version is great, the AIA version is better, mostly because of the audience. It isn't a usual soft ballad due to the heavy riff and drumming during the (awesome) chorus, and the faster pace at the end. Obviously, Barlow slays on this song. It's very noticeable how much he improved since Burnt Offerings.
  3. Violate - This song spawned 10+ similar songs in Iced Earth's discography, but I don't think a single one managed to top it. It's another song that works better on AIA. The ending harmony is really nice.
  4. The Hunter - Highlight of this song IMO is the drumming, some really solid stuff. Great chorus too.
  5. The Last Laugh - I actually think that the fade in beginning of the song is cool and unexpected. And the main riff is cool too. Even though it's a pretty good song, it's still 2nd weakest on the album.
  6. Depths Of Hell - Black sheep of the album. Never rated this one, it's just dull.
  7. Vengeance Is Mine - Designated song with THE Iced Earth riff. I think it's a tiny bit repetitive, but still a very good song.
  8. Scarred - I don't understand what's wrong with all of you who are voting for this glorious song. Seriously. 2nd best song on the album. Awesome melody at the beginning. Then an unusual almost doomy riff. Barlow at his best. Then a fucking incredible emotional chorus with awesome interplay between Schaffer and Barlow. Then Iced Earth's best harmony section. How people don't love this song I'll never know. Sad!!!!! Criminally underrated song.
  9. Slave To The Dark - This song is unfortunate to be sandwiched between two classics... it's still a pretty good song, but when I listen to the whole album I just can't wait for the next song to start. Gotta say I do love the smooth transition between these 3 songs.
  10. A Question Of Heaven - Iced Earth at its most emotional. Barlow at his best. Incredible performance from pretty much everyone here, even Shawver who later confessed he didn't like the softer approach or the ballads. I actually think they never managed to recreate this song live properly. Barlow almost never sings the ending as on the studio version.
Overall: Honestly not sure where to put this album. It's definitely Top 4 but Horror Show, Something Wicked, this one and Stormrider are all nearly perfect albums and it's hard to decide which one's the best. I think that a bit softer approach worked here. It allowed Barlow to showcase his wider range and gave us some of Iced Earth's best ballads.
Best song(s): A Question Of Heaven, Scarred, I Died For You

Voted for The Devil To Pay, Damien, Birth Of The Wicked, The Coming Curse, Enter The Realm, Nightmares, Cast In Stone, Violate, The Last Laugh, Depths Of Hell and Slave To The Dark.
 
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Eliminated after Round 17:
Cast In Stone - 7 votes
Depths Of Hell - 7 votes
Scarred - 7 votes
Enter The Realm - 6 votes
The Last Laugh - 6 votes
 
Voted for The Devil To Pay, Damien, Birth Of The Wicked, The Coming Curse, Nightmares, Violate, Vengeance Is Mine and Slave To The Dark.
 
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Eliminated after Round 18:
Violate - 7 votes
Nightmares - 6 votes
I Died For You - 5 votes

Promoted after Round 18:
Winter Nights
Dark Saga
The Hunter
Vengeance Is Mine

Burnt Offerings joins the game!
 
@Night Prowler - can you reset my votes? Voted for Brainwashed accidentally!

My latest listen through Burnt Offerings really improved it for me (at least the first half). The album is plagued by horrible vocal production and mixing, but the music is really pummeling. Easily their most evil album. The first four songs all have really strong moments (especially Last December and Diary, which I never used to rate highly) and Dante's Inferno is incredible.

The stretch from Oasis to Spirit, however, is truly terrible. I guess Pierced Spirit is fine as an interlude, but some of the vocal melodies and music changes in Oasis and Creator are so hamfisted and terrible it physically hurts me to listen to them.
 
Now we've come to the real thing. Not one song in this album is bad or average.

Like its predecessor, this album has such awesome (and fast) riffing. And that evil atmosphere indeed! Burning Oasis and Creature Failure are lesser known, because not on Alive in Athens, but they sure have some great individual qualities.

Burning Oasis (holy hell, so good this part from 4:35. Bloody great riffs and vocals)
The preceding part is so atmospheric. Love it. The changes everywhere else are fine too. I like and am used to that stuff.

Creator Failure (strong doomy song, superb chorus(?) with its haunting guitar melody behind the vocals:

I also ask of you my lord Thy god in heaven For I understand the error of mans ways But of creation and the seven days When was created the murky haze From which the beast has risen
This doomy part (with Halford style vocals) at 4:33 rules incredibly:
Come to me my demon brother Of us both and our fathers A failure of creation ... abomination



When I first heard Burnt Offerings, I remember that the non-Alive in Athens tracks were great discoveries (I heard AiA first). Even if they've rarely or never seen the stage, and never featured on Days of Purgatory or on any other compilation, til this day I think that Burning Oasis and Creature Failure kick major ass. The dark atmosphere rules and Barlow's vocal contributions are among the best he's done.

And imo Brainwashed has one of the strongest riffs from the catalog at 3.01.
So much anger and threat can be heard from Burnt Offerings. The band went through a difficult time and it's as if you're hearing how they canalized that through the music. Too bad Schaffer himself doesn't appreciate this album, but Alive in Athens truly proved the power of the Burnt Offerings songs and really, again: the non Alive in Athens tracks are way stronger than the lesser material from most other studio albums which are not on Alive in Athens.

More support for the Burnt Offerings album needed. Calling @Perun, calling Perun. ;-)
 
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Burnt Offerings - Easily the best opening to an Iced Earth album. The keyboard intro is chilling and perfect at setting an atmosphere. Then it builds into one of the most intense thrashers the band ever produced. Barlow makes a grand entrance with a versatile performance that gives a small glimpse at what he's capable of. I love how he jumps between the raspy growls and the eerie operatic vocals. This is also one of their more progressive tracks, with so many twists and mood changes. It really stays unpredictable until the end. The dark middle section is one of my favorite IE moments. So much atmosphere and one of Barlow's best vocal performances. Not to mention more eerie keys. Great buildup into the final chorus. Such an awesome song and sets the tone for what will surely be a special album.

Last December - Effective use of fadeout segueing into the next song. The eeriness continues with the clean guitar arpeggios and airy harmonics. Very Remember Tomorrow. When the song picks up, it's pure heaviness with pummeling drums and a slightly more aggressive Barlow (although more melodic than on the title cut). This song is a lot more straightforward both structurally and musically but it creates a great contrast. It's also a unique take on a familiar story.

Diary - This one starts out with a really nice grinding distorted riff before going into something much more creepy and psychedelic. Love the leslie effect on the guitar arpeggios. It's the sort of thing you don't hear often from a Metal band. It also stands out especially for early Iced Earth which is normally pretty raw sounding. It totally works and contributes to the dark mood of the album. The song eventually morphs into another classic IE thrasher. Awesome riffing that is complemented by the aggressive drumming. Great chorus too. Love the way it recalls those guitar arpeggios before the instrumental section. The instrumental isn't bad either. Nice triplet riffing. Another fantastic song.

Brainwashed - Another song with a mysterious and eerie opening. Like the previous song, it effectively merges the atmosphere of the intro with the heavier riffing. This one also has more sudden changes akin to the title track. The song structure isn't as obvious and predictable. It feels like it is constantly evolving and progressing rather than conforming to a standard song format. Love the riffing and dissonant harmonies immediately after the first chorus. Also like the title track is the dark soft middle section. This part is just as effective and awesome. There's really nice ambiance in what I assume to be the guitar reverb too. On that note, there's a lot of attention to detail in the album as a whole but especially this song. I love the whispering during the chorus, for example.

Burning Oasis - This one starts out promising with another captivating intro followed by one of the best riffs on the album. Barlow really goes all out on some of the vocals here. Even on the more aggressive tracks such as this, he emotes a ton. The "take thy fruit" bit is so good. It's an unexpected change and it's super atmospheric. They flow in and out of that section really seamlessly too. Really nice instrumental buildup during the "Burning Eden" part. Like Brainwashed and Burnt Offerings, this song is very progressive. Even more so, as it doesn't really have a chorus. It just keeps going and keeps the listener guessing. A very exciting track that is not to be overlooked.

Creator Failure - This one takes a bit to get going for me, but really starting with "I also ask of you my lord" it picks up big time. Great chorus melody that is ornamented by the guitar work. Having the guitar follow the vocals often doesn't work, but it's very effective here IMO. This is another one with a nice eerie atmospheric middle section. Love the delivery of the "she's going to die" line. The riff that follows that verse is devastating. It only gets better when Barlow comes in with that powerful shriek. :edmetal: Such an amazing buildup. I don't like the fadeout. It cuts the song off too early. They could've dragged it out a bit more and given the song a proper ending.

Pierced Spirit - A really nice palette cleanser before the behemoth that is Dante's Inferno. I really like the lyrics on this and Barlow's delivery. It's a short lyric but really wraps up a lot of the lyrical themes that have been explored previously. It really works thematically and presents Dante's Inferno as a sort of aftermath. A very intimate ballad that's unlike anything they had done before or since. It's a nice oddity in IE's catalog.

Dante's Inferno - The perfect cap to a great album. A metal song about Dante's Inferno is even more ambitious than a metal song about The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. At least with Rime, Steve Harris wasn't dealing with the ultimate heavy metal cliche. Still, Schaffer and Co managed to bring the original work to life and bring in a fresh approach to Metal's favorite topic. The journey through the 9 plains of Hell is perfectly illustrated by the pummeling riffs, the occasional atmospheric acoustic arpeggios, the sudden tempo changes, the blistering guitar solos, and Barlow's relentless vocal performance. It perfectly depicts the horrors of Dante's work and is a presentation of Hell that I'm not sure has been topped by any other Metal song (Slayer comes close but imo they did better with their depiction of Auschwitz).

It's a fantastic song that I could probably devote an entire post to dissecting, but sometimes I think that level of analysis does the music a disservice. But I would like to talk about what is both the song's high point and perhaps the best single moment in Iced Earth's catalog: the ending. Starting with the soft buildup accompanying the lyric "imagine a place..." the band manages to do something truly special. There's already a ton of intensity in this song and album as a whole. Now they're about to somehow take that intensity up a few notches. At the end of the stanza the strings start to swell and it seems like it's about to get there but then they pull back again for one more verse. Then finally it builds up again to the grand reveal of Lucifer himself. It's a very cinematic moment. I can see the camera slowly panning toward the Angel of Light. Knowing that Schaffer is a bit of a movie buff, I imagine he had something similar in mind when creating this part. The "Lucifer!" bit is so brutal. From the riffing to Barlow's intense vocals. He really gives it his all here. There almost seems to be a mocking tone to his voice. This is the symbol of pure evil, but he's trapped in eternal torment just like everybody else in Hell. Barlow manages to capture this relationship perfectly in his performance. The intensity builds further with the outro riff, one of Iced Earth's very best riffs at that. If this wasn't all good enough, they bring in a reprise of the title track intro to tie it all together. Perfect. This one goes to 11.

If my gushing didn't make it obvious, this is my favorite Iced Earth album. It is completely unlike anything in their catalog. It's not the pure thrash of Stormrider, but it's also not the more straightforward Metal sound that started with Dark Saga and remains to this day. It's much more progressive, darker, and extremely heavy. Schaffer must've been listening to a lot of the Florida Death metal happening at the time, as I feel you can really hear the influence of bands like Death on this album. Lots of similar tempo/mood changes and a more through-composed style in favor of the standard song structures. Not only that, but there is an intensity to the music that just doesn't occur in anything else Iced Earth has done. The band sounds hungry on this album. Like they have something to prove. The frustrations from this time come out in full force here and were channeled into something really special. I also much prefer the raw sound to the more polished sound of the albums that came later. Sometimes I wonder where the band would be now if they had continued to pursue this direction instead of changing course immediately after. Not that they didn't do great things later, but nothing hits me as hard as Burnt Offerings. It's their most complete and consistent album.

Picking songs to eliminate is a near impossible task, as I truly enjoy everything here. I ended up going with Pierced Spirit, Creator Failure, and Diary. Pierced Spirit is a nice track, but admittedly it isn't something I'm going to listen to much out of context. Creator Failure and Diary both have awesome moments but they're a slight notch below everything else here.
 
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Credits:
Jon Schaffer - rhythm guitar & vocals - 3rd album with the band
Randall Shawver - lead guitar - 3rd album with the band
Dave Abell - bass - 3rd album with the band
Matt Barlow - vocals - 1st album with the band
Rodney Beasley - drums - 1st album with the band

  1. Burnt Offerings - Definitely the best Iced Earth album opener. Criminally underrated song (by the band). Schaffer carries this song both vocally and musically. The riffs are awesome here. And Barlow is still a bit raw on this album. Randall Shawver produces one of the band's most frantic guitar solos. The only downside of the song is the fade out outro.
  2. Last December - It's Barlow's time to shine! Already in the first minute he shows how big of an improvement he is over the previous singers. Schaffer doesn't let him take all the spotlight though and appears again in the chorus (but he was already killing it with the riffs).
  3. Diary - Underrated song. Shawver does some very interesting work in the background during the verses... He did that a lot and it's rarely replicated live (Angels Holocaust mostly). Anyway, the back and forth singing from Schaffer and Barlow in the chorus is awesome.
  4. Brainwashed - This is where the album gets the Powerslave syndrome. Three awesome opening songs, then 4 good but not great ones which are overshadowed by the closing epic (here it's 3-4-1 whereas it's 2-4-2 for Powerslave but you get the point :p). Brainwashed is a good song but some of the vocal lines and parts are a bit too much. I think that the "lies, foolish lies, behind your brainwashed eyes" part is super cheesy :p
  5. Burning Oasis - This one is a lot better than Brainwashed. Don't think Barlow ever did screams like these again. The only one apart from the interlude that was never played live... Would be kinda cool if they did it with Stu because he could growl the end of the song... if Schaffer let him do it :p
  6. Creator Failure - Weakest full song on the album. "Fail me not my master" part is super awkward vocally. The highlight of this song is another frantic guitar solo. Also, Barlow again goes insanely high vocally at the end.
  7. The Pierced Spirit - Cool little interlude that easily could've been a part of Dante's Inferno, or a proper full song, maybe entirely acoustic.
  8. Dante's Inferno - It took years for me to fully appreciate this song. I still don't think it's their best one, but it's pretty damn close. It repeats many parts but it doesn't really feel repetitive. I think that the song has a bit more energy on AIA but the studio version is awesome too. Some trivia: no one knows how to properly recreat Shawver's shredding during the verses and no one knows the lyrics to the choir parts which is why they aren't played live and didn't appear on the Stu re-recording.
Overall: Not their best album, but a good debut for Barlow. All the albums with him afterwards (apart from Crucible) are better and have him in better form. But this album marks the end of the thrash Iced Earth era. The riffs were never as ferocious again as they were on this album.
Best song(s): Dante's Inferno, Burnt Offerings, Diary, Last December

Voted for The Devil To Pay, Damien, Birth Of The Wicked, The Coming Curse, Slave To The Dark, Brainwashed, Burning Oasis, Creator Failure and The Pierced Spirit.
 
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Eliminated after Round 19:
The Pierced Spirit - 9 votes
Creator Failure - 7 votes
Prophecy - 6 votes
Hold At All Costs - 5 votes
Burning Oasis - 5 votes

Promoted after Round 19:
The Devil To Pay

Best song from the Something Wicked Trilogy had more votes than Burning Oasis... SMH. I feel like Forostar when we talk about the 90's (no offence, Foro :p)...
 
Gettysburg, Something Wicked and The Suffering trilogies get one extra song that can be promoted separately from the rest of the album.
 
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