Iced Earth's Reviews

The Dark Saga

Iced Earth's songwriting matures on this overall good album

At the dawn of the 90s, Iced Earth managed to start off their career with three outstanding albums. The debut album featured a songwriting style which fell between both Iron Maiden and Metallica. The only factor that kept it from being as good as some of the others was vocalist Gene Adams, who lacked the talent level that the band's founder Jon Schaffer was trying to achieve. Jon Greely replaced him in the followup album, Night Of The Stormrider(1992), a majestic metal concept album which took the band to new heights. Although he was much better than Gene Adams, he ended up being kicked out due to his inability to work well with Schaffer. Thankfully, IE found their best vocalist with Matt Barlow on the next album Burnt Offerings(1995). It took three years to come out because the band was having issues with their record label, so the dark times of the band really showed on the album.

Now that the band is back on track and things are settling down, we arrive at IE's fourth album, Dark Saga. As everyone knows, it's a concept album based off of the comic book character Spawn. The front of the album even has awesome cover art drawn by Todd McFarlane himself. I never really read the comic, and other reviewers have already pretty much explained the story, so I'll give it in brief: A good man gets killed and sent to hell, but a demon gives him a deal to see his wife again with the catch being that he must sell his soul to the devil. He takes it and changes into a demon himself, but finds out his best friend married his wife in the meantime. His soul is still good though, yet no matter what good he tries to do everyone still hates him, and so he falls to hell in the end. The good news is that the production is much better on this album and the instruments all sound very clear cut. Also, Schaffer's songwriting here matures quite a bit from the last couple of albums. You can still hear IE's influences, but it's less apparent now than in the past because the band has finally found their own sound. Plus, the lyrics here are actually written well, considering the subject matter of the album. It's written about a comic book, yet it never comes off as cheezy in any way. In this area, it passes with flying colors.

It starts off with the melodic midpaced title track, which sets the mood of the album. Not as dark as Burnt Offerings was, but still heavy nonetheless. Next is the gloomy beautiful semi-ballad 'I Died For You'. Very strong, and one of the best ballad type songs IE has done. It opens a new style which the band would utilize very well on the next album. 'Violate' starts off midpaced and then explodes into a fastpaced thrasher. It even has one of the coolest choruses: "Enter now.... AND VIOLATE!" 'The Hunter' is another high point of the album. It's actually the first IE song I've ever heard. I didn't take to it much at first, but over time I've come to really like it. 'Last Laugh' is another heavy rocker, with double-bass drumming aplenty. 'Depths Of Hell' is a short midpaced rocker, and 'Vengeance Is Mine' speeds things up again. The album ends with a trilogy of sorts, starting with the midpaced 'Suffering Scarred', going right into the faster 'Slave To The Dark', and finally ending in the beautiful heavy ballad 'A Question Of Heaven'. It's another real album highlight, complete with Barlow's sister on backing vocals. This is another one of Iced Earth's finest songs, and ends the story perfectly, especially considering that Barlow shows incredible passion in his performance here.

So in the end, Dark Saga is a decent album and definitely a worthy purchase in anyone's heavy metal or IE collection. So why only 4 stars then? It's just that it's probably one of my least favorite IE albums, and I listen to nearly all the other albums moreso than this one. It could also be because with the exception of tracks 8 and 10, all the songs feel too short, clocking in at nary more than 3-4 minutes. This may be due to the fact that normally the IE songlength is around the 5-6 minute mark. DS a 4 star effort in the context of all of IE's work, but 5 stars if compared to other metal albums of the 90s. Don't let the rating deter you though as it is actually many fans' favorite IE album, so do check it out. The good thing though is that the more you listen to this album, the more likeable it is, so maybe over more time I'll warm up to it. Start with Stormrider or the next album Something Wicked This Ways Comes(1998), and then get DS. Sadly, this is the last IE album with lead guitarist Randy Shawver, but he ended up leaving the band with 4 great albums worth of expert guitar prowess to know him by. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Other recommendations:

-'Something Wicked This Way Comes' by Iced Earth
-'Burnt Offerings' by Iced Earth
-'Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son' by Iron Maiden

Buy this album on Amazon at $13.99