Iced Earth's Reviews

Night of the Stormrider

A massive improvement over the debut

Iced Earth had been together since the eighties, and they released their first full-length album in 1991. However, the debut album, while excellent, is not what band leader/rhythm guitarist Jon Schaffer had in mind for the band. The vocalist, Gene Adams, just couldn't sing that well, and Schaffer had him removed from the band. His replacement was Jon Greely. The band also recruited a new drummer, Richey Secchiari. With Schaffer's new version of the band assembled, the band released their second studio album, Night Of The Stormrider, in 1992. How does it measure up? Read on for my review.

You're going to hear one thing about this album rather often - Jon Greely is a much better vocalist than Gene Adams, although not as great as his successor in the band, Matt Barlow. This album is a concept album, and the songs flow excellently into one another. The opener, Angels Holocaust, is an interesting track in that it combines a fast and heavy metal assault with a backing orchestral arrangement. Amazingly, this works very well! Track number two, Stormrider, is fast-paced and fierce metal as only Iced Earth could deliver. Randy Shawver's guitar playing is excellent in this track, as it is on most other tracks featured here. The chorus of the track is particularly memorable. As the album progresses, the band experiments with a number of attempts to fuse heavy metal stylings with more melodic ones, and they succeed with every attempt. Even the brief, mostly acoustic interlude tracks, Before The Vision and Reaching The End, are excellent. However, the two best tracks on the album would probably have to be Desert Rain and Pure Evil, the tracks that create the best fusion of melodies and metal. It's amazing how well fusing the styles worked for the band on this album. And they close the album out with the excellent Travel In Stygian. In the end you are left with an excellent album that improves on the debut in pretty much every way.

Like some of the other releases in the Iced Earth catalogue, this album has been remastered, remixed, and rereleased. Normally, remixing tends to hurt the quality of an album, but in Iced Earth's case the remixing actually works wonders on the sound quality. If you don't have this album yet, make sure to get the rereleased version, or just get the Dark Genesis box set - the versions of the albums it contains are the remastered ones.

This album is, put simply, a metal masterpiece. I recommend this album to any fan of classic-style heavy metal. Following the release of this album, Jon Greely, though an excellent vocalist, was released from the band because he was difficult to get along with. The band was going to break up, but managed to find a steady vocalist, Matt Barlow, with whom they recorded several more albums. Barlow has long since become the band's most popular vocalist, but their one shining achievement with Greely, Night Of The Stormrider, remains an excellent album nonetheless, and is worthy of a spot in your classic metal collection.

Buy this album on Amazon at $14.99