Controversial opinions on metal

Nothing wrong with the production on Demolition or AoR. Even Jugulator is fine by the standards of your typical groove metal style production.
 
Jugulator is a terrible album, but the production is not the issue. Although Cathedral Spires could sound a lot better.
 
Jugulator is a terrible album, but the production is not the issue. Although Cathedral Spires could sound a lot better.

agreed. the songwriting was shockingly pedestrian. And while I really like ripper with Iced Earth, he just didn't fit with Priest. (I still don't see/hear why people think he's a Halford clone. His voice just doesn't have the diversity of Halford's.)
 
You can hear him channel Halford on Cathedral Spires and it sounds great, but most of the album he's got this tough guy thing going.
 
I always liked the first two the most and thought ripper has been good but kind of overrated in most things he's done.
 
Iced Earth has always been overrated; with the exception of a few memorable riffs and Ripper's vocal performance, they're a pretty boring band.

They got more boring with ripper though. The vocals and production on the first few albums is perfectly fitting. The newer stuff was kind of sonic overkill.
 
Glorious burden was just the one that stuck with me the most, but that's not saying much as I found their material exceptionally weak and boring. There is no best ie album, glorious burden is just the least shitty.

Give me demons and wizards first album over all of ie
 
I listen to Iced Earth once in awile and The Glorious Burden is not good at all. Night of The Stormrider and The Dark Saga are excellent.
 
Something Wicked is a pretty solid album. Nothing amazing, but a couple pretty sweet tunes. Overall I don't understand how they've achieved the prominence they have, because there's loads of better and more consistent bands in the same general style, but I don't hate them.
 
First three are all the Iced Earth I need (minus Dante's Inferno, fuck that bloatfest). Although they have driven their own sound into the ground, I don't think that there are that many others too comparable to them. People might say "oh USPM band X deserved to be as big as them", but they have too many faster/thrashy riffs to compare. The deeper melodramatic thing Barlow brought to the band was pretty uncommon/notable at the time afaik as well.
 
The Coming Curse is a pretty amazing song- their standout track alongside Dante's Inferno. There's a couple good tracks on horror story that are decent too. Overall though they're pretty meh.
 
The deeper melodramatic thing Barlow brought to the band was pretty uncommon/notable at the time afaik as well.

This is true. Songs like Melancholy (Holy Martyr) really wouldn't work with a more conventional vocalist.

There aren't so many bands that sound exactly like Iced Earth, but I'd say their sound is comparable to stuff like later Tad Morose, and the comparison is seldom favorable.
 
Megadeth needs to do way more instrumentals. The 'inbetween vocals' parts (interludes, solos etc) are often the best parts of Megadeth songs. Dave gets a good flow going sometimes though.

For example, the best part of this song is from 2:45 to 4:30. I don't really like the rest of the song at all.

 
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