Iced Earth's Reviews
Burnt Offerings (Average Rating: 9.12 out of 10)
Hello! -- This is NOT a "thrash" album. (Rated this album with 6 out of 10)
Reviewed by
A music fan
from San Mateo, CA United States
One thing about heavy metal fans: perhaps partly due to the extreme nature of the music, they exaggerate like hell! - but none more than Iced Earth fans! While there is, no doubt, some thrash riffing on this album, it is NOT a thrash metal album, let alone one of the best, and to call it that is to mislead the listeners. Also, to say that "Dante's Inferno" is "W/O a doubt POSSIBLY the best" is a ringing endorsement: dude, is it "w/o a doubt," or is it "possibly?" - it can't be both - and just how many metal songs have you heard, dude? In any case, even to say that this is ONE of the best is a stretch - at best.Okay, back to this album. This album is okay. These guys do have some amazing instrumental talents, but this is the third album (also "Purgatory" and "Something Wicked") from these guys that I've listened to a few times each and traded in at used-CD store. They live up to their name because their songs just leave me cold. Many of their songs start out promisingly, or have promising sections, but just end up trying to do to much, or ending weakly. They just end up sounding like metal "symphonies for the kiddies," to borrow a quote from a '60's pop record producer. Don't get me wrong, I do admire bands who try to put some brains in with the usual metal braun but this band just lays it on too thick. Each album has a couple of promising songs, but the rest of it is some promising riffs weighted down by overly-ambitious song structures. Okay, I'll admit that the biggest problem I have with this music is that while his style has become a little more varied since "Days of Purgatory" I can't get past Matthew Barlow's corny vocal delivery. I still think that this band's convoluted song structures and lyrical meanderings handicap this music but it would be easier to take with a more menacing vocalist, like the guy from Nevermore, instead of Barlow's quasi-operatic style. In fact, while I was recently being blown away by Nevermore's "Dreaming Neon Black" album, it occurred to me that was what I had hoped that Iced Earth would sound like. Metal fans who have "lived a little," will likely find Iced Earth boring, long-winded; and too derivative of NWOBHM and early thrash, without shedding any new light on either of those genres.
Buy this album on Amazon at $14.99
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