Iced Earth's Reviews

The Glorious Burden

A very good Album by Iced Earth !

Here in Germany (the country with highest Metal sales in the world) virtually all the Heavy Metal fans eagerly awaited the new Iced Earth album.
And what can I say, the waiting for it was certainly worth while. Okay, some might say that this CD is not as heavy, hard and powerful as previous releases of the band. That is undoubtably true, but I think the good amount of quality riffs and melody in general more than compensates for that (foible ?)
Tim Owen has left Judas Priest and joined (as many in the metal community expected) Iced Earth, an excellent power metal band.
The songs on this albums are all good tunes, while the Metallica and Iron Maiden influences for once are no longer present in the sound of Iced Earth. I had to get the double CD Version, since a friend advised me to, due to the 3 extra songs on it.

The only critique that I have has to do with band leader Jon Shaffer's extreme amount of patriotism. Here in Germany, as in most part of the rest of the world, most people were also shocked about 9.11, but Shaffer's view of the world, as expressed in several interviews, is to me, really that of a somewhat paranoid right-wing extremist. He justified the wars fought against other countries (Afghanistan & Iraq) which killed now many times the amount of people that died during 9.11. and apparently has nothing against further so called wars on terrorism. Also the video to the new album was really politized; showing the twin towers continually and having to watch Jon and Tim with agony on their faces.
Maybe I didn't get it, but I always thought that Heavy Metal (bands) were against war and racisim in general. Alone the amount of anti-war songs by Metal bands proofs that amply.
So while the album is musically excellent, I don't like some of the messages that it seems to convey. Nontheless, I thought that the idea of a concept album of the Civil War was fabulous and needed to be done.

Buy this album on Amazon at $20.99