Artist: Iced Earth
Album: Plagues of Babylon
Source: Spotify
Pre-listening Notes: And the metal continues! American power metal masters, Iced Earth. To be completely truthful, I have never been a huge Iced Earth fans. Not so much in the sense that I've disliked them, but more so in the sense of I have never really given them a huge chance. On the flipside, the two Demons and Wizards albums, which is one of Jon Schaffer's, who basically is Iced Earth, other project with Hansi Kursch, from Blind Guardianwho guest vocals on one of the songs on this album. Iced Earth has been doing this for almost three decades and back in high school I remember a brother of a buddy of mine being huge into this band. But, I was getting into punk and hardcore at this point, so I couldn't be bothered with metal, let alone power metal. If it didn't have short, fast songs with barked vocals, I wanted nothing to do with it. So, over 20 years later, here I am about to sink my teeth into the first full (sort of, one song was left off the stream) Iced Earth record.
Initial Reaction: I expect any power metal record to start epically, and so far so good. Okay, so far not super feeling this vocalist, which is apparently their fifth. The chorus is a little better, but the verses are just not doing it for me. Musically, however, this is awesome.
Random Thoughts: Alright, so the vocals are still an issue for me. Apparently this guy also sang in Into Eternity for a while, although I'm not familiar with that band. I think his voice just isn't melodic enough for what I was expecting. There isn't a ton to say about each individual song on this, with the exception of Among the Living Dead, which is the song that features Hansi Kursch. They really need to do a third Demons and Wizards album, like they talked about like 3 years ago. Okay, the song Cthulhu is excellent! And maybe I'm starting to warm up to this guy's voice. The album kind of blended into the background of what I was doing towards the end, so the last few songs seemed a little unmemorable to me.
Final Reaction: Overall, I dug the music, quite a bit actually. But, the vocals still remained just average even as I started to not notice them as much, I never quite dug them when it was just the lead singer. When there was harmonies going on, it was much better. I think I'm going to have to go back and check out some of the older singers to see, maybe I will like those albums more.
Final Grade: 6.5/10
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