Metal Reviews

I'm going to get something by Iced Earth, and I was thinking about getting either Something Wicked This Way Comes or Alive in Athens...which would be better? Or do you recommend starting somewhere else?

night of the stormrider.

Quoted for truth.

Also, for a good overview of their career; Alive in Athens. Only get the three disc version though.

If you happen to find this buy it, i got mine for 40 bucks about 4 years ago but im not sure if its still available, other than that i think you should start with Something Wicked instead of Night Of The Stormrider, because even if Stormrider is IMO their best, Something Wicked is a more accessible album, and not many people seem to like John Greelys vocals while on the other hand Barlow seems to be praised by almost any IE fan.
Alive In athens and Days Of Purgatory are also good albums to start with.
IMO all of IE albums are at least good, so you cant really go wrong with any of them.

Depends on what you've heard by them, and what you've liked, but out of those two I'd say Alive In Athens, the 3 cd version, that is. The most kickass live album I've ever heard.

Besides that I think Something Wicked This Way Comes or Night Of The Stormrider would be good starting points indeed, but the former if you don't have any problems with ballads, and the latter only if you can get into Greely's vocals. He's a good singer but not for everyone. Burnt Offerings is their best offering in my mind, but I'm not sure if it's a good starting point. It's a little different from their other albums.

I don't think you should start with the self titled, Horror Show or The Glorius Burden however. And don't start with Days Of Purgatory either, those are less inspired versions of their songs in my mind.

You can't go wrong with Iced Earth though, I like all their stuff do different degrees. With that said, try to get hold of the 3cd version of Alive In Athens, or Something Wicked This Way comes.


Iced Earth =

Wow i would buy that just because it looks so damn cool.

Well, I just had a birthday and have a lot of money to spend...so, I might try to order Eyesore's thing, or else I'm going to buy Alive in Athens. I might have to go with the 5-CD thing just because it's so damn cool...

That's a good place to start too. Night Of The Stormrider and Burnt Offerings are two of their best albums. The cover cd isn't really that great though, but it's a nice bonus. As for drawbacks, some people are disgusted by the vocals on the selftitled cd.

Count me in that. Adams is horrible. It takes a lot of effort trying not to laugh everytime I hear him sing. Its not very often that a singer can ruin an album, but I think Adams did a great job of it.

It is indeed very cool. But it's no longer available, so you'll have to search for it and expect to pay a decent amount. All those CDs are remastered, and you can buy them individually in their remastered form, but it's the only place you can get the Enter The Realm demo on CD.

Yeah, I was looking around and the cheapest I could find it for was $64 on Amazon.com, and that was used...I think I might have to go with Alive in Athens. The way I see it, I can get three CD's of great music on Alive in Athens for 15$-20$, and four CD's of great music and one of covers for $100+ (new). Alive in Athens sounds like a better deal to me...and plus, if I get that, I can get a few others that I've been hoping to get for along time now also (Biomechanical's Eight Moons, Ayreon's The Human Equation, others).

I'd go for Alive In Athens in that case. It's what really got me into Iced Earth in the first place, after having listened to Dark Saga for a while, and it's almost like a best of but 10 times better. The only flaw is that the title track from Burnt Offerings is missing. And Barlow does a fantastic performance behind the mic, so you won't have to worry about restraining laughter while listening.

Something Wicked is the best IE album IMO (in fact, it's my favorite metal album of the late-90s). It's also a good album to start with since, as pointed out before, it's probably their most accessible.

Believe it or not, Horror Show was actually my first IE album. I bought the limited edition (with the kick-ass Transylvania cover and Jon Schaffer interview) in October, 2001. I then bought Something Wicked roughly one month later.

By the way, on a sidenote, is the title "Horror Show" actually intended to be a play on A Clockwork Orange's slangy "horrorshow"?

I would say no. Each song except for "Ghost Of Freedom" is about a horror-related character.

And Alive In Athens is definitely a good choice. I don't think Night Of The Stormrider is, though. The vocalist is too different, and not that great, in my opinion. Anything with Barlow is a better choice. Then pick up the first two and The Glorious Burden. My first was The Dark Saga, and I loved it!

I really really like Horror Show. It's always fighting with Something Wicked as my favorite Iced Earth album.

Burnt offerings is really good to for the most part.

Horror Show is actually my least favorite Barlow album. Normally I think about half the songs on an Iced Earth album are truly standout tracks, but on Horror Show I think there's only three that are on cut above the rest. Those would be Dracula, Phantom Opera Ghost and Damien. The others are good, especially Frankenstein, Jeckyl & Hyde and Dragon's Child, but I just don't think they're anything special. I read Jon saying somewhere that he couldn't really connect to the concept at the time, and I think that's my problem too. The songs are good, but I have a hard time truly connecting with any of them. Dracula is emotionally intense, but otherwise I think many of the songs sound kinda uninspired.

That albums seems to be hit or miss with people. I love it. I think it's a great album. I love that kick ass background riff during the verses of "Im-Ho-Tep (Pharaoh's Curse)!" You barely hear it, but if you can pick it out of the mix it's pretty badass.

I love it too, I just love it a little less than other Iced Earth albums. I guess that makes it a miss for me though, relatively speaking of course. I'll have to listen to Im-Ho-Tep in my headphones sometimes, see if I notice anything I haven't paid attention to yet.