Maidenfans Album Club: Purest of Pain - Solipsis

As it is July 4th, Independence Day here in the U.S. (#Murica!), I wanted to point out that "1776" might be my favorite track on this album. As it is not featured on Alive in Athens I was not as familiar with it. Specifically because of this thread I listened to the entire album on a flight yesterday, and the one song that made me put down what I was reading was 1776. The riffs are just great, which is a strength of Iced Earth generally, and it is appropriately martial in tone. It fires you up!

Also, on the subject of Barlow's vocals, when he is in the higher octaves, he is fantastic. When he sings baritone, however, he gets too emotive and showtune-y, and just sounds silly. A couple times he made me laugh, which was surely not the intent.
 
When I was a young man, back in 2003, just getting into Iced Earth, I wasn't a big fan of 1776. Now, I agree that it might be the best song on the album, and a truly great heavy metal instrumental. If you called it "nameless" you still might get the point, it's that good and emotive. Schaffer would expand on the musical themes in that for Gettysburg (1863), but as much as I love the entire Gettysburg trilogy, 1776 has the same punch in a shorter time. Strong song construction.
 
1776 is probably my 2nd favorite off the album. I still maintain it's the greatest power metal instrumental I've ever heard. The little lute solo is a nice touch too.
 
So after an album that was ripped to shreds by most of the participants, our second foray into the world of The Album has been praised by just about everyone, to a certain extent at least. Certainly many people here consider it a highlight of the late '90s and one of Iced Earth's crowning jewels. Which leaves me wondering.... what the fuck is it that I'm missing here?

I thought that Destiny was a nice listen, it just needed more work in crafting the songs together, as the songwriting itself was not up to snuff here. In contrast, Something Wicked This Way Comes has some very good songwriting... but I'm just not sold on it enough. "Blessed Are You" is the worst song on here and could've been cut; "Reaping Stone", "Consequences", "My Savior", and "Stand Alone" did very little for me as well. A shorter album would've helped, I think. Eight songs instead of thirteen would have been more digestible for this style. Meanwhile, Barlow is not a good vocalist. Or maybe he is and I just don't like his style. Well, disliking is too harsh, but I don't care for him. He has good high notes but most of this album uses lower ones and I don't like the tough guy persona he seems to be putting on. Schaffer plays like a motherfucker, though.

I'm just not to impressed with the album as a whole. Like, it's definitely well thought-out, but I guess I don't care for the end product. "1776" is fucking phenomenal though and I agree that it's the best song on the album and a terrific instrumental. "Melancholy" also impressed me, but to a bit of a lesser extent. This album just isn't for me. Whatever I'm missing doesn't seem worth the time to try to find and when it comes to '98, I'll just stick with The Chemical Wedding.

(I guess I sound overly harsh; it's not a bad album by any means but not a half of what everyone else chalks it up to be and not really my thing. Definitely a step up from Destiny but I guess we're still a way's away from a truly great record.)
 
Cornfed Hick said:
Memo to Steve Harris...
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Well... for his solo career, maybe, but Maiden is that odd band where I actually like having ridiculously long albums because it means we can hear more of them. Especially given how often a new album comes out...

Unless you're talking about in terms of '98; Virtual XI is an amazing album (in my mind, which is hardly emblematic of the general populace).

As to LC's original question, I do not think that Iced Earth should be trying to recapture any sort of style they hit with this album. Evolution is critically important to artists as a whole and living in the past is not the smartest thing to do. Pushing forward and trying to break new ground (or just attempting to do old ground with a different twist) is better, IMO.
 
Iced Earth are a band that I never listened to prior to the last 12 months or so. I have listened to a couple of albums didnt find anything I wanted to listen to again. I feel the same with this album. I find most of the songs a tad boring and largely forgettable. This Barlow character undoubtedly has a strong voice but his use of it almost had me laughing out loud at times, in particular the line about his 'dying breaaauuuahaaath.' His melodrama is downright cringeworthy sometimes. And I very nearly gave up on the whole thing when he informed me that his dead friend was an angel.
Im not a fan of the pacing early on either. Id prefer a couple of faster, heavier numbers in a row as opposed to heavy/soft/heavy/soft. Melancholy is a good tune and the only song I recognised but theres times when the melodrama is nearly too much and I think "why the fuck am I listening to this?"
Head an shoulders about it all is 1776. Cracking tune. The last 3 are decent too.
So, Barlow can sing but sometimes he needs a slap; Schaffer can play but I dont necessarily like what hes playing. After listening to 4 or 5 albums and remaining indifferent, maybe Iced Earth just arent for me.
 
Diesel 11 said:
Meanwhile, Barlow is not a good vocalist.
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Ariana said:
Something Wicked This Way Comes may not be my favourite IE album (this honour goes to Horror Show), but it's an absolute masterpiece. It's very dynamic and varied, and even the weaker songs sound pretty good in the context of the album. One thing that makes the album special is that all of the slower songs on it are extremely good. I'm not usually a fan of (power) ballads, but those on Something Wicked... all deserve love.

Melancholy was the first IE song I ever heard, followed by Watching Over Me, and it may sound odd, considering my general dislike for soppy songs, but they actually made me an IE fan. Incidentally, my daughter loved them both too, especially the latter, so we could both belt it out together in the car, had it not been for the fact that she won't ever let me sing. :(

Apart from these two, the highlights on the album for me include Consequences and Blessed Are You (some really tasty sop), as well as My Own Savior, which I love despite some eyebrow-raising lyrical content there; and 1776, which could have been longer. I wish metal bands would make more instrumentals in general.

Last but not least, the crowning achievement of the album and some of IE's finest in general: the Something Wicked trilogy, which finishes off the album with a flourish and an epic touch that leaves you wanting more. I feel this one sentence isn't really doing justice to the trilogy, but if I were a poet, I wouldn't be wasting my precious words on writing useless metal reviews anyway. My personal favourite here is Birth of the Wicked - love the atmosphere, the lyrics, the solo and most of all - the chorus. Pure brilliance.

Obviously, not all of the songs are perfect. For instance, Burning Times and Stand Alone are both very solid (first time) songs, but unfortunately suffer from some repetitiveness and I'm not sure how impressive they sound in isolation.

The lower echelon includes Disciples (whose chorus is very catchy nonetheless), and Reaping Stone (which reminds me of some other band very much but I can't figure out which one).

In conclusion, I find Something Wicked... a very well thought-out and executed album, with decidedly more highs than lows. I love the songwriting and Barlow's vocals are completely out of this world.
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These are all of my thoughts exactly. Horror Show will forever rate the highest for me, but this one comes second. It’s varied, it’s entertaining, it’s emotional. A truly great record.

To everyone who thinks Barlow’s emotive, showtune style is “too big, melodramatic, etc”...you’re listening to a band that writes about mythical creatures rising from ancient sands and magically fulfilling a prophecy. I think you’re missing the point and the joy. Stop taking it so seriously.

phantomoftheicarus said:
I knew you'd beat me to it :p I'll nominate Dream Theater's Distance Over Time
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I would second this.
 
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MrKnickerbocker said:
To everyone who thinks Barlow’s emotive, showtune style is “too big, melodramatic, etc”...you’re listening to a band that writes about mythical creatures rising from ancient sands and magically fulfilling a prophecy. I think you’re missing the point and the joy. Stop taking it so seriously.
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I listen to Running Wild and Dio and Maiden and Scooter with unbridled joy. I dont think Im missin the point with Iced Earth, I just think that it doesnt hook me so the things that I find joyous in those other bands stand out as cheesy or OTT in IE. If the music was more to my liking I would find the joy in the vocals and lyrics.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
To everyone who thinks Barlow’s emotive, showtune style is “too big, melodramatic, etc”...you’re listening to a band that writes about mythical creatures rising from ancient sands and magically fulfilling a prophecy. I think you’re missing the point and the joy. Stop taking it so seriously.
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Dityn DJ James said:
Outside of his over the top-ness, Barlow is a pretty good vocalist for this kind of music - It’s supposed to be big and epic and just a little tongue in cheek.
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Niall Kielt said:
I listen to Running Wild and Dio and Maiden and Scooter with unbridled joy. I dont think Im missin the point with Iced Earth, I just think that it doesnt hook me so the things that I find joyous in those other bands stand out as cheesy or OTT in IE. If the music was more to my liking I would find the joy in the vocals and lyrics.
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That's fair, IE's music is not incredibly grabbing if you're not into it. Personally, Barlow is what sold me on Iced Earth. Most of the riffs are repetitive and stock, some of the melodies and songwriting are strong, but not always. The band has power in their playing (similar to Metallica, I think) that makes the music seem more interesting than it is. But mostly, Matt Barlow's voice lifts up everything they do IMO. It's why they've never been the same without him.
 
Some thoughts about the discussion we're having.

I'm really happy to see all the love for 1776. For a long time, I would have said it was my favourite song on the album, and I certainly still rate it very highly. It seems a bit like the starting point of Schaffer's 'Murica spleen, which was continued with Ghost of Freedom and then Glorious Burden, but at least here he still knew how to write a rocking song.

What this album gave us most of all were three live favourites, Burning Times, Melancholy (Holy Martyr) and Watching Over Me. I cannot speak for anyone but myself with the following, but I think I had a very special experience with the latter two. Although I had been listening to Iced Earth occasionally since the turn of the millennium (usually by way of friends playing them here and there), I did not really become a fan until around 2004/05. That was when I got four albums, Alive in Athens, Something Wicked, Glorious Burden and then Touched by the Crimson King when it came out. I actually liked Glorious Burden the most at the beginning. I would say that is because it was then the most accessible IE album, but that also meant it didn't really last long when 90's Iced Earth did click with me. When I finally got into Something Wicked, I very quickly got the rest of their discography.
So along comes 2007 and Framing Armageddon. I was happy that Schaffer was going back to his fantasy themes rather than suffocating us with an American flag, and I did and do like Framing Armageddon. I finally got to see them live that year, with Owens at the helm, and again, I enjoyed it a lot. Nevertheless, even then I had a sensation that I was watching a band past its prime, with a singer whom I thought was decent at the best of his times, but I knew was nowhere near the one who made the band great. At that time, I did my part to defend Owens-era Iced Earth, and I scoffed at all those reactionaries who would only want Barlow and the 90's. But truth be told: After spending several weeks listening to hardly anything but Glorious Burden and Framing Armageddon, just to prove to myself that I was not one of those people, I put on one of the old records - I don't remember which one, but I think it was Burnt Offerings - I simply couldn't deny that the band had once been much, much better. Anyway, when it was announced that Barlow was returning to Iced Earth, I did feel bad for Owens, but I was also excited to see where this would be going. First, there came an album that, while not exactly worse, wasn't significantly better than Framing Armageddon. But then I saw them live (supporting Saxon, oh irony of ironies), and even though they only played one hour, I think this was one of the best gigs I've ever witnessed. And the highlights were Melancholy and Watching Over Me. The former had been played the previous year with Owens, but Barlow simply gave a completely different dimension to it. And Watching Over Me was probably the number one highlight of the set. Where I'm getting at is that I heard those songs on a unique occasion that I hadn't expected to happen before and don't expect to happen again. If you're an IE fan now and see them live for the first time and don't see anything too special about those songs live, I understand that. It's not your fault, but you wouldn't fully get these songs if you don't have the right person to sing them.

All that was a lot more structured and to the point in my head, so sorry for the ramble. I want to get to one more thing that makes Something Wicked an important album. Something Wicked, and by extension Alive in Athens, represents Iced Earth at the peak of their, for lack of a better word, indigenous development. It is like the last stratum of an archaeological site before the place got burned down and occupied by a foreign power. What do I mean by this? Until Something Wicked, Iced Earth was based on Schaffer's original vision of a thrashy version of Iron Maiden driven by his power-drill riffs, dark fantasy themes and dramatic sound complemented by a larger-than-life vocalist. After Something Wicked, something changed. Holding this album next to Horror Show, I think anybody can agree that the musical shift is tremendous. Pre-Horror Show IE derived its epicness purely from the songwriting itself.
On Horror Show, we see the introduction of multi-layered choruses, orchestrations, atmospheric keyboards, and just an overall grander scale of things. Everybody who did their homework knows what happened between Something Wicked and Horror Show: Demons and Wizards. Schaffer came out of this collaboration with a radically changed musical idea and brought Blind Guardian into Iced Earth. It didn't really happen the other way around. Blind Guardian became all the more bombastic and symphonic after Demons and Wizards too, but I hardly think this was Schaffer's doing, but just Hansi Kürsch being more and more able to do what he wanted to do in the first place. Schaffer on the other hand had his bromance with Kürsch take over Iced Earth step by step. Each album became more bombastic and gargantuan, and I think that's where we see the loss of focus that eventually brought about the band's crisis. Schaffer became too dependent on outside influences to be able to really make the music he set out and learned to do. I think that is why Something Wicked plays such an important role in IE lore. It was the last truly focused effort, so if it really is that which Schaffer is trying to recapture, I hardly find it surprising.


I hope I'm making some sort of sense with all this. Either way, I nominate Grand Magus - Wolf God.
 
Very detailed insight, I especially appreciated the story about seeing Melancholy and Watching Over Me performed live by Barlow. It must've been a very special experience. As someone who's not a big IE fan but pretty versed in Power Metal and Heavy Metal, it was easy for me to rag on Barlow's low points on Something Wicked. But after reading your post, I realize Barlow is much more than just some singer from IE's past. I feel like he is a talisman representing a greater era of IE's past. An icon of authenticity and a past representative of a band that once had a much more unique vision.
 
I'm confused here. Although I am not as big an IE fan as some other people here, seeing people call Barlow not a good vocalist and just some ex singer is bloody offensive. You don't need to be an obsessed IE fan to know Barlow is *the* IE singer. He's a legend, an icon, and one of the few males that has ever made me jealous about hair. It would be like going back to 1995 and calling Bruce "some ex-Iron Maiden singer".
 
I haven't written much yet on the subject of this album, but I will say this: the repeated characterizations of Iced Earth as "power metal" really shocked me at first. Like, in my head, this band is not a power metal band, nothing really close to it at all. It's more like a thrashier version of post-NWOBHM, but I always considered it separate from the construction of power metal entirely. Perun's story, however, is pretty much hitting it on the nail, and I think he's right about the Hansi-Jon collaboration changing the sound of the band. I think there's a serious argument to be made, however, that IE was already heading that way on The Dark Saga, which has some of those earlier power sounds that would start to become more and more prevalent in Horror Show and The Glorious Burden. All that being said, I think Something Wicked This Way Comes is the culmination of 1990s Iced Earth studio albums, setting the stage for Alice in Athens and really just making an absolute apex for the band.

It's been awhile since I listened to this album in full, likely the last time was in my discography run before I saw Iced Earth in February, 2018. Like most Iced Earth albums, there's at least one throwaway song. Schaffer is obsessed with ballads, but I think he should have quit making them after Melancholy (Holy Martyr) and Watching Over Me, both of which are the apex of that style of music for this band. That means Consequences should have been cut, sorry. I think Burning Times is a good opener, but it used to be one of my top IE songs, no more. Disciples of the Lie is one that has consistently stood out for me, that aggressive, hard thrash song that seems to be on every IE album of this era (like Violate and Jack, also two favourite IE songs).

We've already talked 1776 to death, and I don't think this began Schaffer's Americana obsession, but it certainly was the first time that made it to an album. All the same, I think that there's been a lot of good stuff to come out of it, and when he keeps politics out of his lyrics he does damn good as an exemplar to American history, much in the vein that Iron Maiden has represented British history. I don't think it's a stretch to say that Schaffer sees his band as an "American Iron Maiden", and perhaps this album is the closest they ever came to that being true.
 
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