Iced Earth's Reviews

The Dark Saga

For the most part, an excellent album

It took Iced Earth a pretty long time before they found a steady vocalist, but they finally did in the mid-nineties with Matt Barlow. The previous vocalists both caused problems for the band (one couldn't sing, and one didn't get along with the band), but Barlow seemed promising. In fact, he became the band's first "steady" vocalist (and to believe, the band was thinking about disbanding before they found him.) Burnt Offerings, the first album to feature him on vocals, proved that he had what it takes to make Jon Schaffer's visions of an excellent metal group a reality. For their 1996 album, The Dark Saga, the band decided to try something a little different than what they had done in the past, but at the same time, to keep the sound they had invented on their earlier albums. Read on for my review.

The Dark Saga is a rather interesting album, because it's a concept album about Spawn, the comic book character created by Todd McFarlane. McFarlane even created some damn fine cover art for the album. Iced Earth had proven in the past that they were very good at making concept albums, and for the most part, The Dark Saga proves to be no exception. With this album, the band sticks to the "death metal meets Metallica of all eras" sound that they used on Burnt Offerings, and this proves to work pretty well once again. It has often been said that Iced Earth's songwriting matured with the release of this album, and I agree. They had written excellent material in the past, but their songwriting really flourished with this release. Through and through, the album rocks hard. Perhaps the true highlight, though, is the "trilogy" of songs featured at the end. These songs are among Iced Earth's finest, even if they aren't some of the band's more popular tunes. On one of these tunes, Matt Barlow even got his sister to do some "angelic" backing vocals. What's even more surprising is that that little experiment worked out pretty well! In the end, this is a very good album. Not Iced Earth's best by any means, but still solid.

To date (as of June 1, 2004), there is only one version of this album readily available on CD. Some earlier Iced Earth albums were remixed, remastered, and rereleased, but thusfar, The Dark Saga has remained untouched. Of course, the sound quality on this album is just fine (unlike some of the earlier ones that originally suffered from poor production), so I guess it doesn't really need a remastering job.

What more can I say? Dark Saga is a fine Iced Earth album. However, by their standards, it's one of their weaker albums. Although many people say Matt Barlow is Iced Earth's finest vocalist (and I'm NOT saying they're wrong), I think his vocals are the biggest problem on this album. Also, as a whole, the album seems too much like the last one, Burnt Offerings. If you're new to Iced Earth, start with Night Of The Stormrider or Something Wicked This Way Comes. This is a VERY good album, but it just isn't one of their stronger ones. Still, even the weaker Iced Earth albums beat out the so-called "stronger" albums by many other artists. If you're a fan of Iced Earth, this one is worthy of a place in your collection.

Buy this album on Amazon at $13.99