John, and everyone really, while IE's heyday has definitely passed, they did put out some pretty awesome tracks in the post-Something Wicked era. Horror Show, despite its cheesy thematic and riff recycling (same riff on three tracks, seriously?!), had
Dracula,
Wolf,
The Phantom Opera Ghost. Granted, these tracks were awesome mostly because of Barlow's voice, but still.
Despite Tim Owens' solid vocal work, The Glorious Burden was a fucking coaster. The songwriting is just terrible on that album, plus all the AMERIKUH!-shit grates, especially for non-Americans. Every album has the right to a shit track, but this one is simply shitters and fillers.
Framing Armageddon, though, is a seriously underrated album. Fans were whining and crying because "It's not Barlow!", but Tim Owens sung the shingles off the roof in that one. Plus, it was a concept album that told an actual story, not the loosely-connected, half-hearted semi-concept stuff that diminished other albums. Tracks like
The Domino Decree, with that epic chorus, and
Ten Thousand Strong which is more catchy and head-on show that Tim Owens was every bit the vocalist Iced Earth required. Though a slight malus point for the "WAAAHHH" in the beginning. Vocalists, don't do it. Don't give in to the WAAAHHH.
Out goes Tim Owens (which in hindsight was a terrible mistake) and in comes Barlow again, to record the second
Something Wicked album,
The Crucible of Man. Honestly, the album was a bit of a snoozer. The carefully crafted and paced story from Framing Armageddon just deflates like a soggy cake due to the stagnant, repetitive and recycled lyrics (every track is "man is corrupt"), and musically, it's just... completely forgettable. Sure, Barlow puts down a decent performance, but you can already tell his heart wasn't in it, and the whole album is just... meh.
Out goes Barlow again, and now it's Stu Block who gets to play musical chairs behind the mic.
Dystopia was decent. Had some alright tracks, but it didn't knock me off my feet or anything.
Boiling Point is a good track (chorus at least, the verses are forgettable, which is typical for Iced Earth). You can tell the band is trying to adapt to Block's different vocals. He's a very good singer, but not the same type Barlow or Owens were.
On
Plagues of Babylon, you can tell the band (i.e. Jon) has written music around Block's vocals, and it sounds much more confident. I wasn't impressed at first, but the more I listened to it, the more I'm liking it. Some tracks have really amazing choruses, even though the verses are, as always, the weak points.
Cthulhu and
The End have really evocative choruses, even if they're a bit sing-along. And then there's the absolutely awesome cover of
Highwayman. Jon should generally stay away from the mic, but his crappy singing style actually fits on this one. The fact that Russell Allen, Stu Block and Michael Poulsen put down awesome performances just makes it so much better.
*ahem*
Anyway. That took longer than I'd planned. Just, you know, wanted to put it out there that while people currently feel part of the "cool kids club" by shitting on IE, their recent work really isn't all that bad. I know, you shouldn't expect them to invent new things, or to blow you away with a radical new approach to metal, but what they do, they do decently.
It's kinda funny that so many people praise
Something Wicked as THE BEST Iced Earth album. Sure, it has some of the best tracks the band has ever put out, but if you take off the nostalgia goggles for a sec, you'll notice the "great track - filler - great track - filler - great track - filler" structure makes the album much less good than it could have been. And the lyrics, apart from the SW trilogy, were absolute shite. Rhyming "madness" with "sadness"? On two different tracks? Rhyming "cry for" with "die for"? Verses like "make the sadness go away / come back another day"? That's fucking elementary school crap. Schaffer's lyrics have at least matured beyond that shit stage (excluding
When the Eagle Cries, of course, and its "how could they / why would they").
