I did? I'm a swell guy.

Burnt Offerings is absolutely fantastic. Don't know why Schaffer wouldn't like it as all the songs on it are killer.The addition of Barlow was a definite plus for the band,giving them their signature sound.

Love this album and was lucky to pick it up used recently seeing as it's my favorite IE right after Dark Saga (next on my list to recapture). The first song is absolutely one of my favorite IE songs from the creepy keyboard intro to the all out metal assult of the rest of the song intermissioned with a slower part that is one of my favorite parts to sing. The rest of the album doesn't let up and my other favorites are Last December, Diary, Brainwashed, Burning Oasis, and one of the best epic songs ever, Dantes Inferno. The latter is also another favorite of mine to sing.

THE DARK SAGA (1996)

Matthew Barlow - vocals
Jon Schaffer - Rhythm guitars
Randall Shawver - lead guitars
Dave Abell - bass
Mark Prator - drums

Produced by Jim Morris and Jon Schaffer

And what do you know, Iced Earth records two concecutive albums with the same vocalist?! The only lineup change here is the new drummer, Mark Prator, replacing Rod Beasley. Really a revolving door filling that vacancy, but it's not like any other job is safe with Iced Earth, which in practise IS Jon Schaffer's solo project with session musicians. Anyway, the drumming is good, so that's that. Not as fast, wild or complex as before but more tasteful.

The Dark Saga is a concept album telling the story of Spawn, a Todd McFarlane comic book character. It may sound strange, but it really does work.

1. Dark Saga
2. I Died for You
3. Violate
4. The Hunter
5. The Last Laugh
6. Depths of Hell
7. Vengeance Is Mine
-- The Suffering --
8. Scarred
9. Slave to the Dark
9. A Question of Heaven


This time there is more colour and diversity on the album. And plenty of tracks that work immediately. Instant pleasers. Like Dark Saga and The Hunter. The latter is one of their more popular songs, for sure. I got the Dark Saga before Burnt Offerings and I learnt to like this type of more commercial sounding, bigger choruses and a bit more polished Iced Earth than the earlier more gritty sounding band. This album breaths and is an easy listen, background or foreground. Enough detail to keep you interested, but also plenty of hooks that you can enjoy while doing the dishes for instance. That's my very non-professional take on it.

I Died for You is somewhat of a ballad, at least by 90's Iced Earth standards. A great song, but Matt Barlow uses his 'emotional' voice on it, which I don't know if I'm too crazy about. You will hear a lot more of that on Something Wicked... The song itself is wonderful and shows Schaffer is not that one-dimensional as a songwriter.

Apart from the slower and more accessible stuff, there are fast burners like Vengeance Is Mine and the Last Laugh. Vengeance Is Mine especially is very good, it could have easily been on Burnt Offerings. But my own favourite is definitely Violate. I don't know what it is about this track, maybe it's the fact it's featured right after a slow song that makes the speed and aggression seem even greater, or maybe it's because it's so short it leaves you wanting for more.

The final epic is broken into three pieces. Separate tracks, separate songs, one big pompous epic. I think it works better than Dante's Inferno, especially the last track is massive.

This is the Iced Earth disc that does the least for me.I just can't get into it.When I listen to it,it turns into background music and never grabs my attention. Maybe it has something to do with Spawn,a character who I never really cared about.

It's a solid album despite Schaffer's poor taste in comic books

This time Iced Earth delivers a great album. They create their own style, both in the music, as well as lyrical concept. Even the cover-art is really cool. It is drawn by Todd McFarland, and that is no coincidence. The album is a concept album about a comic book-series called Spawn. And Spawn is of course drawn by the very same McFarland! He has also drawn the KISS Psycho Circus comics. This album is considered a heavy metal classic, and who would deny that Iced Earth's blend of classic heavy metal, power metal and borderline thrash, is nothing short of amazing? I love how Jon adds those acoustic riffs in some of the softer areas on the album. I love how Matt is delivering all the lyrics as if they were the last ones he'd ever breathe. I love the dynamics of the album, and within the songs themselves. Yes, this is Iced Earth in top form. But who would have thought that even greater things were to follow? Tracks 8 to 10 created "The Suffering"- trilogy.

Killer tracks: Dark Saga, I Died For You, Violate, The Hunter, Vengeance Is Mine

Good album, but not as good as the first three. Violate is a killing song though.

This is my favorite Iced Earth album!!!

This one and it's follow-up, "Something Wicked This Way Comes" would never be topped again.

This album is a sheer masterpiece. Flawless. 10/10.

Easily one of my favorite albums of all time.

About Spawn, since someone mentioned it being silly...

I never read the comic, but I still enjoy the story in the album. It's part Barlow though - he really makes himself the protagonist. He sings the most fantastic of verses like he means every word. Granted, I do have a soft spot for Todd McFarlane. I like his MARVEL comics a lot. I used to love those Spider-Man and Hulk stories he did back when I was a kid.



Anyone remember that Spawn movie? It's a bit lame, but that's pretty much all I know about the story of Spawn having never read the comics. John Leguizamo was Violator, the evil clown.

An excellent album, this is where I started really getting into them. This seems to be complete unlike the other albums. Good production, everyone is tight and it rocks.

My first and favorite Iced Earth album. Every song is awesome and it is next on my list of albums to recapture on my wat to completing my IE discography. Got this because I liked the HBO cartoon of Spawn and was intrigued by a metal album ispired by the comic. Definatly one of the greatest blind buys of my life (along with Nightfall In Middle Earth and Metal Opera Pt. II). A Question Of Heaven is one of my all time favorite IE songs.

DARK SAGA was the first Iced Earth album I picked up as a new release, as I'd discovered them only a year or so prior. As a retired comic book collector, I appreciated the "Spawn" tie-in, though I was never a really big fan of that particular comic book.

(*Begin Comic Book Geek Interlude*)

Quite frankly, the storyline used on this album is a lot more linear and made more sense than the Spawn comics ever did. "Spawn" came along towards the end of my comic collecting career but I did buy it monthly for the first two years or so of its existence... and then one night I sat down and read all of the issues that had been published thus far in a row, and realized that I could not make heads or tails out of what the hell was going on. So that was the end of my Spawn fascination. Haha. I suppose I should thank Jon Schaffer for boiling all of MacFarlane's nonsense into an easier-to-understand format for me.

(*End comic book geek interlude*)

As for the CD itself, the album doesn't really catch fire till "Violate" kicks in, but from there it's gold. The album-ending trilogy is one of Schaffer's most emotional epics. I remember there being rumors that a track from this album might end up on the soundtrack to the then-in-production "Spawn" movie, but obviously that didn't happen. Considering that the "Spawn" movie soundtrack ended up as this weird experimental thing loaded with electronica guys remixing stuff by metal guys, Iced Earth wouldn't have worked well in that format anyway.

Oddly enough, I used to work with a girl who also worked for Todd MacFarlane's toy company (they have an office in Bloomingdale, NJ, not far from where I live)... I once asked her if she'd ever heard of Iced Earth or this album and her reaction was "?" so I brought the CD into work one day and showed her. She'd never heard of the band, never seen the album, which we both thought was kinda weird. Prior to that conversation I had always wondered if the "Spawn" tie-in did Iced Earth any good as far as getting recognition/press outside of the metal underground, but since someone in MacFarlane's own organization was clueless about it, I guess the answer to that question was "nope."

DAYS OF PURGATORY (1997)

Purgatory was the old name of the band.

With their new vocalist, Iced Earth were slowly building momentum. Recording Days of Purgatory clearly shows how Schaffer was happy with having Barlow aboard. It's essentially a 'best of' Iced Earth, just remixed ('improved' according to Schaffer) and some parts re-recorded and thus you get to hear Barlow sing tracks from the first two albums. Most of the tracks, actually.

Disc 1

1. Enter the Realm
2. Colors
3. Angels Holocaust
4. Stormrider
5. Winter Nights
6. Nightmares
7. Before the Vision
8. Pure Evil
9. Solitude
10. The Funeral
11. When the Night Falls

Disc 2

1. Burnt Offerings
2. Cast in Stone
3. Desert Rain
4. Brainwashed
5. Life and Death
6. Creator Failure
7. Reaching the End
8. Travel in Stygian
9. Dante's Inferno
10. Iced Earth

There is also a one disc version.

The list of contributing artists for this one is kind of big, with different songs played by different bassist/drummer combos... so I'll just skip that. The important part is that it's still Schaffer, Shawver and Barlow on all of the tracks.

Re-recording tracks (or parts of tracks) for a compilation is a nice idea, but still somewhat useless for fans that have the earlier albums. That's why there's also something extra. Enter the Realm (short instrumental) and Nightmares are from the band's demo/self-issued EP 'Enter the Realm'. Winter Nights is a previously unreleased track and Cast in Stone is Written on the Walls redone with different lyrics.

Winter Nights was supposedly written for Night of the Stormrider, but never appeared there. Rumour has it Gene Adam couldn't do it as well as the band had hoped, which in part helped lead to the departure of Adam and the burial of the song. A very good song with tempo changes and a soft part you wouldn't expect. Nightmares is a bit primitive, short, straight forward, thumping track. Enter the Realm works great as an intro to Colors, which also has to be among my favourite 'upgrades' made for the album. The other one is When the Night Falls. Gene Adam didn't really do it justice in the debut album.

The rest is pretty much what you'd expect. A little beefed up, that's all. It might be a bit too much to have Burnt Offerings tracks featured here, but they sound slightly better and it does make it a more tempting package for someone who doesn't own the album.

A good selection of songs too, and as far as compilations go, this one is very well done. Clearly meant for the new fan who just picked up Dark Saga, and it fills its purpose well. I got this album before I got the self-titled debut, so a good part of the tracks were new to me.

This is the only Iced Earth album I don't own.

I need to pick it up.

It's just that I love the first two albums very much how they are. I guess I'm afraid of those songs being butchered.

I need this for the collection nonetheless.

DAYS OF PURGATORY -- ehhh, don't love it, but don't hate it either. Like Metallic Blaze said, I was already quite familiar with most of these songs by the time this was released and had no problem with the first three albums just the way they were...so in a way this CD seems kinda unnecessary to me. I think this was released mainly to provide a "short cut" for newer fans who were just getting on board with the band at the time. I picked it up mainly for the two "new" songs, "Nightmares" and "Winter Nights," both of which are OK but nothing mind blowing.

I guess it's a decent enough disc. I only have the single-CD version (bought it used a few years back) and that's enough for me. I do dig the cool artwork by the Chaos! Comics (creators of "Lady Death") crew by the way.

This is for those who want to hear Matt sing these songs and he does a great job on them. If you are satisfied with the first albums the way they are, it's not necessary.

I like this one but I am only familiar with Night Of The Stormrider seeing as I had the debut for all but a few weeks. Either way the songs with Barlow I think are better than the origionals. Unfortunatly, I only have the one disc version but I found it used and wouldn't pass it up just because it wasn't the special edition.

I still pull this one out occasionally. I enjoy hearing Barlow sing the older stuff. I bought this before I heard anything off of the first two albums, so I guess I'm one of the "new fans" that this was aimed at. Worked for me! I have always been confused by the inclusion of the Burnt Offerings stuff since that was done with Barlow in the first place. Seems a bit unnecessary. I have the two disc version.

The bass guitar sounds a lot better on Days of Purgatory than on the original recordings of the first two albums.

Fat Freddy wrote:

I do dig the cool artwork by the Chaos! Comics (creators of "Lady Death") crew by the way.

Me too. Especially the chick in the pictures with the dead Egyptians. Interesting ensemble she's wearing

Dark Saga - very good album...very melodic, but still very Metal...was the album that introduced my son to IE, who are now his favorite band ever.

Days Of Purgatory - proof that Barlow was a WAY better singer than the other 2 guys before him...

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES (1998)

Matthew Barlow - Vocals
Jon Schaffer - Rhythm guitars
James McDonough - Bass
Larry Tarnowski - Lead guitars
Mark Prator - Drums

(the last two are not listed as band members, but guest musicians)

Produced by Jim Morris

The band leans further towards simpler songs, the evolution that sort of started with the Dark Saga. The majority of the songs on Something Wicked are straight forward, if not formulated. I don't mind, as I tend to prefer songs that are compact and well thought out rather than glued together massive jigsaw puzzles that sound like band practise. Anyway, the songs are good. The fast songs really pack a punch and the ballads have more power than ever.

1. Burning Times
2. Melancholy (Holy Martyr)
3. Disciples of the Lie
4. Watching Over Me
5. Stand Alone
6. Consequences
7. My Own Savior
8. Reaping Stone
9. 1776
10. Blessed Are You
Something Wicked Trilogy:
11. Prophecy
12. Birth of the Wicked
13. The Coming Curse

The album flows well - there's a heavy, aggressive, fast song that is usually followed by a ballad. Certainly there's a lot of ballad-y songs in here. I guess you just don't want to put two of them in a row. Melancholy and Watching Over Me are really good, especially the latter, but Barlow's vocals in these type of songs tend to get a bit whiny. Especially in Blessed Are You and Consequences.... I much prefer the aggressive Barlow featured on Disciples of the Lie, for instance. By the way, that song reminds me a lot of Violate from Dark Saga. Ripping stuff!

Stand Alone is one of the faster tracks, too. The chorus has these gang shouts that sound like something from Anthrax's Among the Living album. Fun stuff. Reaping Stone is a bit too plodding, but it has a nice trademark Jon Schaffer break after around the 2 minute mark. Blessed Are You is a bit weak, but I like the Savatage-like counterpoint vocals in the outro/repeat chorus. 1776 is instrumental, and really good actually. Difficult for an instrumental song to keep the listener interested, but this one really grabs you. No lyrics obviously, but it shows Schaffer's interest in American history. A sign of things to come, maybe...

The lyrical themes are varied this time around. Melancholy has religious undertones, while Disciples of the Lie is an attack on a (Catholic) priest from the perspective of a molested child. Blessed Are You is a tribute to the fans of the band. Speaking of fans, this album actually did quite well sales-wise, at least in Europe, reaching number 19 in the German album chart. I don't think the previous albums did this well, though Wikipedia says Night of the Stormrider reached number 60 in Japan.

Anyway, the album ends with a 'Something Wicked Trilogy'. A story that would later be expanded into two full length albums. Birth of the Wicked especially has been among my favourite Iced Earth songs ever since I heard it. Still in my top ten, for sure. Basically the story goes something like this: long ago Earth was inhabited by the Setians, a peaceful superstitious race. Then men came, from space. They had superior technology, plenty of aggression and nasty intentions, so they killed nearly all Setians. But the Setians had this prophecy about a savior - a powerful beast that could destroy mankind. A few Setian 'guardians of the prophecy' managed to escape the extinction of their race and they, while "taking the likeness of men", were to look after and make sure that 'something wicked' would arise 2000 years later. At some point they also wiped off the collective memories of all of mankind, making them forget about their past and their technology. But that's in the later albums...

This album also introduced the mascot of the band, Set Abominae, featured on the cover.

Real good album, one of my favourites. An instant pleaser, for sure. Give this album to a potential fan and they are going to enjoy it. I got into the band after buying this.

"Something Wicked This Way Comes" is almost my favorite Iced Earth album.

Almost.

If it weren't for the masterpiece of "The Dark Saga", it would be.

Actually both albums are soo good that they are almost tied for me. They easily the two best Iced Earth albums ever.