Iced Earth

MassOfKthulu · Post by **MassOfKthulu** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 6:26 pm

I like a few IE songs but my favorite IE is Internet Explorer.
I cant really sit through a whole record either.But i think B. Offerings is the least boring of their albums.I suppose Jon Schaffer gave up on strong coffee after this LP and no more string muting,just moaning over Spawn.bleh
As for the first Brocas Helm,yes i can relate with Giannis about this.i dont much like it either.BUT EVERYTHING else,everything,i absolutely worship.

Black Axe · Post by **Black Axe** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 6:30 pm

MassOfKthulu wrote:I like a few IE songs but my favorite IE is Internet Explorer.

What are the last two words of that sentence? My browser seems to have blocked them out.

MassOfKthulu · Post by **MassOfKthulu** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 6:44 pm

hahaha
If i failed to see through a brave serving of Saxon humour,then do forgive me
Otherwise : |nt3rn3t 3><pl()r3r

Sgt. Kuntz · Post by **Sgt. Kuntz** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 6:56 pm

pzman wrote:As far as studio albums go, i have to pick Night Of The Stormrider. (The others up to Horror Show are more or less good whereas the newer stuff hasnt impressed me.) But the album i listen to most is Alive In Athens - one of my fav live albums. (This would've been almost perfect if they had included the song 'Burnt Offerings').

Good point, i also enjoyed "Alive In Athens" a lot, i also agree with "Burnt Offering", they shouldn't left it out. One of very few live albums that i really liked.

Sammi Curr · Post by **Sammi Curr** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 7:31 pm

ION BRITTON wrote:
great_knuthulhu wrote:You know, I can understand people not liking Brocas Helm
It's not that I don't like BH as a whole, I just can't stand the debut, the hard rockish vibe gets on my nerves.

You know, I can sort of get behind this even though I like the first BH and love hard rock. It doesn't have the completely fucked up off the wall sound of Black Death or the controlled chaos of Defender of the Crown. It sounds like what they would do next in a fetal state.

EDIT: Oh yeah, on topic: Enter the Realm is good and kind of funny, debut is really funny, Stormrider is decent-ish but really lame at times. Burnt Offerings has their two best songs: The title track and Creator Failure. It sounds like a Painkiller - Priest/Metallica coverband trying to play Death Metal.

ION BRITTON · Post by **ION BRITTON** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 7:37 pm

There's really no comparison between the debut and Black Death. It sounds totally different and is much greater, I'd say that it's the band's masterpiece. A track like Prepare for battle probably did not exist even as an idea when they were writing the tracks of Into Battle.

FuneralCircle · Post by **FuneralCircle** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:48 pm

MassOfKthulu wrote:I like a few IE songs but my favorite IE is Internet Explorer.
.

Internet Explorer is fucking horrible! Get Google Chrome!!

I do agree that Black Death is the best Brocas Helm, but that's really not what we're discussing here.

Ernest Thesiger · Post by **Ernest Thesiger** » Thu Jul 22, 2010 9:09 am

I've not heard a single Iced Earth album. Was impressed by the demo & the track on Tampa Bay's Metal Mercenaries. I'll investigate the albums in chronological order then.

anthares · Post by **anthares** » Thu Jul 22, 2010 9:14 am

Burnt offerings is their best.

The Erlking · Post by **The Erlking** » Thu Jul 22, 2010 9:56 am

ION BRITTON wrote:There's really no comparison between the debut and Black Death. It sounds totally different and is much greater, I'd say that it's the band's masterpiece. A track like Prepare for battle probably did not exist even as an idea when they were writing the tracks of Into Battle.

While I too prefer Black Death over Into Battle as a whole I still like how the debut sounds very "off". Hardrocking but weird stuff. And my favourite BH songs are Metallic Fury and Into The Ithilstone.

Black Axe · Post by **Black Axe** » Thu Jul 22, 2010 11:15 am

FuneralCircle wrote:
MassOfKthulu wrote:I like a few IE songs but my favorite IE is Internet Explorer.
.
Internet Explorer is fucking horrible! Get Google Chrome!!

I do agree that Black Death is the best Brocas Helm, but that's really not what we're discussing here.

Chrome is fucking horrible, get something else.

Abyss · Post by **Abyss** » Thu Jul 22, 2010 1:17 pm

I use firefox but thats another story, i like the first 5 Iced Earth albums but my favorite track of theirs still has to be Nightmares from the Enter the Realm demo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbV1edbYEXQ

The Sentinel · Post by **The Sentinel** » Fri Jul 23, 2010 9:43 pm

I worship the first two albums; absolutely amazing powermetal on par with the best US-metal releases. Enormous riffs and a great epic touch to the fierce music. I can't listen to the rest because I loathe Barlows voice and the music is simply too wimpy after the first two masterpieces.

nightsblood · Post by **nightsblood** » Sat Jul 24, 2010 4:34 am

Brocas: never got into 'Battle', love 'Black' to death

Browsers: Safari for Macs, Firefox for PCs

Barlow and Co: Even though I can't stand anything they've recorded in the last 15 years or so, IE will always have a special lil' place in my heart.

The early 90s were a total wasteland for good, real Heavy Metal here in the USA; unless you wanted to hear Pantera, Biohazard, or Cannibal Corpse clones, you were pretty much shit out of luck. White Zombie was on Beavis and Butthead, leaving me to spend $30 for a Blind Guardian import CD that took 4-6 weeks for the cool indie shop in town to track down for me. Not a good time to be an oldschool mtalhead in this country

Iced Earth were just about the only band going for those who, like me, hated those crappy MTV 'metal' bands and wanted something more akin to the great power-speed bands of the 80s**. As such, those first 3 Iced Earth albums were an incredible lifeline for some of us here in the US. I loved the dark, angry feel they emanated. Yeah, some of the early vocalists were, uh, 'under-trained' shall we say, but they could spit out some dark, venomous stuff! 'When the Night Falls', 'Travel in Stygian', 'Angels Holocaust', 'Stormrider', 'Curse the Sky', 'Path that I Choose', just Darker Than Black stuff! LOVED IT! I drove the college radio Metal Show DJ nuts repeatedly calling in for more Iced Earth tracks, as I couldn't find the CDs locally right away**. For a couple of weeks I thought the band was called 'Ice To Earth' b/c the DJ had a slight accent

I remember interviews with the band at that time that were full of frustration and anger as they had a hard time trying to break through playing that style of metal in the US at that time; it really mirrored my own frustration with all the crap metal popular in the US. (This was about the time CM almost blew it by putting so much time and money into Cro Mags while constantly overlooking IE, who stood out on their roster like a sore thumb).

'Burnt Offerings' became THE IE album for me; it was my soundtrack for 1995. It is still in my Top 10 of the 90s. At that point they were untouchable in my eyes. I played and recorded tracks from those 1st three for everyone I tape-traded with back then. I got one of my best friends into them; next thing I knew he contacted the band and started their very first website for them (this was back in the day when it took 20 minutes to download a shitty-sounding 2-minute song clip using the fastest connection on our entire campus!

).

When 'Saga' was getting ready to be released, I told the local record store owner he should stock it; he took my advice and it was one of his best sellers for a couple of months. As a thanks he gave me all the promo stuff Century Media had sent to the store. Sadly 'Saga' did nothing for me; the band had lost its bite. If 'Offerings' sounded dark and angry (as Ion said, almost death-metally), then 'Saga' sounded sulking and brooding.... kinda like the change between Sentenced 'Amok' vs 'Down'.

I knew it was over when I heard IE re-do 'When the Night Falls' for the 'days of Purgatory' release. They took one of their darkest, most chilling songs and Barlow was singing it like a goddamned goth rock tune

I had no use for Gothed Earth; as they rode on to huge popularity with 'Alive in Athens' I quietly slipped out the back door and moved on to better bands. I've heard most of their albums since; 'Wicked' was passable but others ('Burden', 'Horror') were laughably awful to me.

So that's my IE nostalgia.

** for those from overseas or who are too young to remember, Heavy metal was hard to come by in the US in the early-mid 90s. The best indie stores only carried stuff from CM, NB, and Relapse; if you wanted anything else, you had to special order it. My local store didn't even carry many CM titles, so it took months to track down an Iced Earth cd back then. Your best record shopping was actually done at best Buy; the store that is now devoid of worthwhile music used to stock tons of CM and NB material, and they also got random imports in for good prices. I walked out of a Best Buy in Akron, OH in 1995 with cd's by Therion, Sentenced, Amorphis, Saint Vitus, Unleashed, Samael, etc. Oh how things changed once Best Buy got themselves established

Today it's easy to wonder, "gee nightsblood, why the hell weren't you listening to Dead Calm, Enchanter, Longings Past, Latent Fury, and all those other great true Metal bands that were still in the US at that time?". You have to understand that there was ZERO scene and ZERO lines of communication in most parts of the US at that time. Unless you lived in an area with active bands, you were unlikely to ever hear OF them, much less anything BY them. The ONLY thing you heard was brutal Death Metal. I spent the early 90s on a college campus with 20,000 students, located maybe an hour from Detroit, religiously listening to a weekly college radio metal show, and I never ONCE heard anyone even mention Longings Past, Enchanter, or any of those other demo bands that we all now know and love. Today you hop on line and find a Max Planck demo in a few minutes; I got online for the first time my last semester of college. The only students who owned computers were physics majors. And yes, I tape-traded a LOT back then, but I never came across any of those US trad-power metal demo bands like the stuff Arkeyn Steel has been unearthing. The stuff that we now take for granted as the best early 90s US Steel was almost impossible to find when it first came out.

Helstar · Post by **Helstar** » Sat Jul 24, 2010 5:12 am

The Sentinel wrote:I worship the first two albums; absolutely amazing powermetal on par with the best US-metal releases. Enormous riffs and a great epic touch to the fierce music. I can't listen to the rest because I loathe Barlows voice and the music is simply too wimpy after the first two masterpieces.

Nice pic, but you still don't have the original "Night of Stormrider" cd

?

Nightsblood I've read your post and it's like ... well I can't explain the mixed feelings ... it just teleported my mind back in time ^^ thanks for that

I remember early 90s with first money from work calling every shop I could find phone numbers in the magazines trying to complete some of my fav bands (Helstar Savatage Blind Guardian etc.) collection ... and paying more money for the phone bills than the cds themselves xD

I remember one time I asked about Toxik cds and the guy replied "oh sure they even came here in the shop !" - he was talking about TOSSIC (italian demential metal band rotfl !).

Sometimes I still look to my cassette shelve... hundreds and hundreds ... with some stuff dubbed from a 100th dub ... impossible to even understand if it was AOR or grind LOL