No matter how you look at it, The Dark Saga was a very important album for Iced Earth. It showed the world a softer, more introspective side of the band that was behind thrashfests such as Night of The Stormrider and Burnt Offerings. Turning the anger down and the sadness up also made it the band’s most commercially acceptable album at the time; something that Jon Schaffer probably desired after the very dark and heavy album that preceded this one. While it is above average overall, it is not as consistently solid and balanced as other lauded Iced Earth works.

With the possible exceptions of the band’s debut and The Glorious Burden, every Iced Earth album is going to contain some absolutely fantastic songs. In the case of The Dark Saga, The Hunter and A Question of Heaven are the standouts, and with good reason. The former begins like most of the songs on the album, with a simple, yet ominous clean guitar passage leading into a very Iron Maiden-ish lead melody that will find it’s way into your head immediately. Barlow absolutely shines in the chorus, with a voice full of power and anger, carrying a very simple but awesome melody over the raging music. A Question of Heaven is completely different; a classic ballad with an angelic performance from Kate Barlow (looks like it runs in the family). This whole song has such a desperate mood about it, and is one of the best ballads of the band’s career.

However, listening to the album as a whole leaves me with different thoughts. As I mentioned before, the overall tone of this album is more of sadness and despair than anything else. Considering that this is a concept album about the comic book character Spawn, I can’t help but feel like some of the emotional atmosphere comes off as contrived in songs like Depths of Hell and The Suffering Scarred, rather than a cathartic expression. Sure, Schaffer & friends have always gravitated towards fantasy-themed lyrics and concepts in their music, but I think they were taking it a little more serious than they should have on this one.

As much as I love some of the tracks here, I have to admit that each song can blend into one if you aren’t paying close enough attention. The tempo throughout the album usually hovers around a slow or mid-paced groove, rarely approaching a speed that could be remotely considered fast. Violate has the honor of being the most aggressive songs on the album; approaching the type of aggression that can be found in earlier Iced Earth material. Other than that example, every song contains some sort of clean guitar intro, interlude, or passage that either works (I Died For You), or disrupts the flow of the song, as in The Last Laugh.

Riff-wise, I think this is some of Schaffer’s dullest work. Nothing horrible by any standard, but more dullness than I should expect to find in an Iced Earth album. There were no riffs, save for the delicious melodic lead found in The Hunter, that hit me like almost any song from Horror Show or Something Wicked This Way Comes managed to do. Having said that, this album was released before those two, and the improvements made in that time were more than noticeable.

All in all, I still find this to be a good album. It was Iced Earth’s attempt to simplify their song structure while appealing to a wider audience, and they achieved that for the most part. Being the fourth full-length out of a total of eight, it serves as a transition album to the masterpiece that would follow in 1998. While it’s not really a good starting point for those new to the band, it is essential for hardcore fans.

Especially with that bitchin' cover art.