Burnt Offerings

Often described as the band's seminal album, and their best along with 1991's Night of the Stormrider (see my review of that album for a more thorough description), Burnt Offerings was indisputably the start of a new era for Iced Earth, as it brought in longtime vocalist and frontman Matt Barlow, and also saw a shift from the more or less pure thrash metal sound of the first two albums to a more power/thrash direction. Barlow was certainly a step up from Gene Adam and John Greely, respectively, with a much more charismatic voice and an utterly insane vocal range that could rival any of the greats in heavy metal. Behind such a talented frontman, Iced Earth suddenly began to feel like something special, although unfortunately not even Barlow could save every song on the album. What we see on Burnt Offerings are two brilliant Iced Earth songs ("Burnt Offerings" and "Dante's Inferno") bookending 6 mediocre, forgettable tracks which evoke the style and quality of Night of the Stormrider, but with better vocals.

"Last December," for example, starts with a dark, haunting, and emotive intro, but then segues into a mediocre thrash riff which is repeated for most of the song. There are scattered moments and passages of quality throughout these 6 filler tracks, but they're unfortunately dominated by Jon Schaffer's utterly and inevitably mediocre songwriting style. "Diary" has more than one cool passage in it, but is always alternated with super lame riffs (the opening riff is one of the worst Schaffer creations I've encountered, literally just two notes repeated over and over) and thus necessarily inferior vocal lines from Barlow, as in trying to build on mediocre ideas his vocal lines are usually also mediocre in these sections.

"Burnt Offerings" and "Dante's Inferno," however, are quite something to behold. The former is easily the best song John Schaffer has ever written - even beating out the amazing "Heaven Denies" from the first Demons & Wizards album, I'd say. Every aspect of the song is executed beautifully, and rather than Schaffer's usual fare of "let's insert this part here, and now let's randomly shorehorn this in here, and hey! time for the acoustic section!", it actually flows in a coherent manner. The savage, diabolical main riff complements Barlow's ominous, hateful delivery, which flows quite naturally into the huge, catchy chorus - a chorus for the ages, really. I recall after the first time I heard the song, I didn't listen to Iced Earth for 4 or 5 years and one day I was humming a melody I couldn't place, and didn't realize until later that it was the chorus of "Burnt Offerings." This is one of the greatest choruses (and songs) power metal has to offer, which helps me understand why the band is so popular, I suppose. Other power metal bands should take note of this song, and then ignore 90% of everything else Jon Schaffer has written. Even the bridge is incredible, sending shivers down my spine with lines like "Walk carefully my friend, stab my back again, warning from the skies" delivered by Barlow in appropriately chilling manner. Shortly thereafter, the sudden harsher, maniac yelling of "CAST THEIR BODIES TO THE FLAMES!" is perhaps the high point of the song.

That brings us to "Dante's Inferno," which is essentially what "Travel In Stygian" from Night of the Stormrider wanted to be, yet failed. The main riff is almost identical, but here there are actually more new, nonrecycled ideas, a strong keyboard presence that creates a great atmosphere without ever becoming overbearing, an excellent use of Matt Barlow's versatile abilities, and, ya know...there's actually like 6 or 7 riffs in the song, which even for a song that's over 16+ minutes is still significantly above Schaffer's normal riff density of 1-2 riffs per 5-6 minutes song. Again, the song flows wonderfully, slowly becoming more and more malevolent, ominous, and tortured as the listener slowly descends each of the nine planes of hell. This is really captured surprisingly well for someone of Schaffer's normally quite limited talents; you can track the progression from plane to plane and notice subtle changes in intensity, darkness, foreshadowing, pain, etc. It's a story in musical form, and while I somewhat agree with some of the complaints that it was too long and could have been cut down, I think it needn't be cut down by more than 3 or 4 minutes and even those 3 or 4 minutes that could be cut are never annoying or even especially bland, just slightly slowing the pacing of the epic perhaps more than it needs to be. I really only notice this when I'm actively focusing on the song for its entire duration, though, and it's rather a minor complaint.

Overall, Burnt Offerings is certainly not as strong as Iced Earth fans purport it to be, but it is certainly much more deserving of the title of "best Iced Earth" album than Night of the Stormrider, which contains about half as many riffs as Burnt Offerings, doesn't have an especially good vocalist, and fails to engage the listener for virtually the entire duration of the album. Though I personally would give the "best Iced Earth album" title to Horror Show, here we at least have 2 excellent songs, a mostly engaing Barlow throughout, and "Diary" being somewhat listenable, if you don't mind randomly juxtaposed sections of music. Hell, the 2 minute song "The Pierced Spirit" is actually pretty good as an intro to "Dante's Inferno," as well. So, I'd say this album is tepidly enjoyable, but if you simply listen to the best 2-4 tracks it's an excellent selection of music, and certainly one of Jon Schaffer's finer moments. Too bad even Matt Barlow couldn't save most of the subsequent albums (Horrow Show excluded). Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.