Ledmag, you never cease to amaze me...
About the original topic... it is quite an interesting debate actually, as the two bands are often lumped in the same category together, even when they are years apart.
Dead Heart in a Dead World and Horrorshow DO have their similarities, and while horrorshow has grown on me quite a bit since i first heard it, Dead Heart doesn't do much for me at all, despite nevermore being one of my favourite bands... I hated Horrorshow when i first got it, it just seemed "Wrong" to have been released by iced earth, but once you get past the juvenile lyrics, and the slightly derivative riffing style, there is some downright COOL stuff on the album...
Dead Heart is interesting... it is a step towards the style of Iced Earth, much more "new-age power metal" than DNB or POE. Simplified riffing, thrashy passages and catchy choruses, cool vocals etc...
Neither band has "stayed the same" over the years... EVERY nevermore album is a different style of metal, "Nevermore" being power metal with a thrash undertone, "In Memory" being a dark, complicated thrash album, "politics (see below)" being a technical and complex thrash progressive 'guitar'-album, "dreaming" being a melancholy, almost doomy thrash/power album, and "Dead Heart" being a new age Power-Metal (tradition power ideas, but with detuned guitars and a groove).
While DHIADW and HS have their similarities, it stops there. Politics of ecstasy is like NOTHING that iced earth, nor any other band have ever done... Iced Earth have never even tried to border on prog, they are basically just an updated version of what Metallica dn Megadeth were doing in the mid/late eighties, around the time of Master of Puppets and Rust in Peace.
Nevermore are far superior musicians (no insult to iced earth, but this is a fact), and "the Politics of ecstasy" is unmatched in terms of guitar and drum playing. I applaude iced earth for not coming of as a second rate "we wanna be better musicians" style band, where they play a style which is out of reach for them, they have never given the illusion of progressive ideas or technicality.
Schaffer isn't a great player at all, but he writes some really cool riffs, but just like pantera, they are like a shotgun, some bullets are right on target, and others are totally leftfield, out of knowhere.
Older iced earth is pretty generic, despite the cool riffs and ideas here and there, burnt offerings, the dark saga and earlier have their shining moments, but aside from a shimmer in the park, there is little solidarity to their music... There are a few awesome songs, like Travel in Stygian, Burnt Offerings etc... but that is where it ends, the albums sound very "hurried" to me.
There is a slight parrallel between Nevermore's S/T effort and Burnt Offerings, a little bit being the production, and a little being the groove-oriented thrash riffs, like CBF... Where iced earth released the same album twice, nevermore did the total opposite, and totally reinvented their sound with their following albums, In Memory and POE... while IM was only an EP, it was alot stronger than Iced Earth's full length albums at the time.
I won't go into details, for you people can hear for yourselves the difference between POE and Something Wicked, Dreaming Neon Black and HS etc...
Nevermore and Iced Earth Started off in the same direction, but nevermore took a totally different path, and cut their own way... but both bands have ended up again in a similar spot... heavy and thrashy power-metal, with a similar production (no room to breathe, guitars squashed to buggery, drums the same... the only decent thing about either production is the way that the vocals stand out...)...
