The Dissident
Ancient Mariner
Iced Earth - Iced Earth
Format: CD/Digital
Iced Earth's debut album, an album which kicks off the run of alternating lead singers for a few albums, and one which is known for having rather poor lead vocals on it as a whole. Released towards the end of 1990, the album comes right as the music scene would begin to shift away from the poppier metal into the heavy thrash and grunge scene domination. First things first, Gene Adam is not a strong vocalist and that holds back many of these songs from being much better, but he does have some potential that is seen throughout the record, his vocal approach in some spots sounds like he is trying to be Midnight or Geoff Tate from Crimson Glory and Queensryche, which highlights his lack of power in those spots. The album shines in the guitar work, melodic in spots, and bone crushing in others. The melodic opening to Written On The Walls is amazing and beautiful, then it soon shifts into a monstrous heavy rocker and then finally into an acoustic based piece for a while, the band shows their talents at every turn just in spots it doesn quite click. I don't get why there needed to be two instrumental tracks on the album, especially side by side, maybe if they had been separated it would have been better. Every band has to start somewhere, and this debut shows that Iced Earth will be a powerful force once they hit their stride. The albums highlights are, Iced Earth, Written On The Walls and the closing epic When The Night Falls.
Funeral frankly should of had a proper set of lyrics written for it, even if it was mostly instrumental more would have been appreciated as the instrumental is pretty darn impressive. Iced Earth is a nice opener and introduces the bands thematic approach to their music. Written On the Walls as mentioned before is progressive and features several changes and When The Night Falls is the albums closing sprawling epic, which just hammers down on the positives and the negatives of the album, it is a nice closer and works quite well but really should be so much stronger than it already is.
3 Stars
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