Burnt Offerings

Iced Earth had a hiatus of 3 years between this album and their 2nd one, Night of the Stormrider and you can really hear this out of this album. Much has happened, they had to switch their singer out again and again they have thrown their whole previous achievements over board and started over with a completely different sound. This time it's slower, darker and doomier. According to its page, Burnt Offerings is supposed to be Iced Earth's "heaviest" record, which I can't agree with, but it's definitely one of their most serious albums.

The first song is the title track. It begins with synths and a sinister intro riff, before it goes into a fast thrashy riff. The song is unusual for this band and Jon Schaffer, both musically and lyrically. First of all, there haven't been any duets on Iced Earth before. Here, Jon and Barlow sang together and this song showed to me that there is a good harmony between the 2 musicians, which also was meant to stay. Matt has sung on the most records of Iced Earth and even now there shall be a connection between them as brothers in law. Also Matt and Jon mean to share the same opinions and feelings about the scene, at least in that era you could also hear Barlow screaming "fuck posers" on some of their live shows, introducing Vengeance Is Mine. So here these guys clearly found each other. Burnt Offerings is a great song and it's a shame that they have refused to play this one live until today.

While many claim this as Iced Earth's magnum opus, this album has 2 major flaws, named Last December and The Piercing Spirit. The Piercing Spirit is just an opener, but it makes 1/8 of the whole album, which is just a bad decision. Last December seems to me as if Iced Earth wanted to write a hommage to Romeo and Juliet, but it's just embarrassing. Matt doesn't even sing properly here, in the chorus his vocals have some kind of a hall effect and overall the only acceptable thing on that track is the riff, and even that one is a typical Iced Earth standard riff. So it doesn't matter how great the other songs are, these 2 songs took this album's chance of being great, or even near to perfect.

There is another song that suffers from inconsistent songwriting, which is Diary. The idea behind this song is all fine, it's supposed to create a sinister atmosphere and Jon wanted to have doom metal elements for it, however it just wasn't executed well. First of all, the lyrics are completely silly, like horror trash movie dialogue. But let's be honest, horror movies weren't genius in general in that decade. Then there is the songwriting: While the riffs are again genius, it lacks of a real climax and any points that keep the listener's attention. The high screams of Barlow are nice, but there doesn't follow anything interesting afterwards. So we have 2 bad songs and a filler intro on that album. Ironically, Diary was played live several times for years, even in the Horror Show tour.

Brainwashed is better - it's about a relevant topic, also it tgoes straightforward with a catchy chorus and everything that's important for a good song. There isn't much to say about it, it's the most consistent song here.

The next two songs are complicated too, either you love them or hate them with their slowly building tune. Burning Oasis is the melodic one, while Creator Failure is the doomy one. Both come with high notes from Barlow, while up to now, on Creator Failure you can hear the highest note Matt ever has sung, next to Come What May from The Crucible of Man. I tend to love these songs because of their unique tune. Other than Diary, Iced Earth have really managed to keep the songs exciting,

The last song on this album is Dante's Inferno, which is maybe the only song on this album for most that is even worth mentioning. With its 16 minutes it's the longest song Iced Earth have ever written, if you exclude the Gettysburg trilogy which is split in its parts on the Glorious Burden album. The songwriting is similar, you have a long intro and long parts, the lyrics are equally detailed. Dante's Inferno is about Dante Alighieri's depiction of the 9 circles of hell and almost each of these 9 circles get their own musical character here. You can see the other 6 songs as a form of warm-up with Dante's Inferno presenting the best musical arrangements of each of the other songs in the end.

Overall the band gathered new strength with their new singer, and the good songs are (almost) perfect, but the 2 bad songs are a clear miss and the interlude is nothing special. Ironically, the misses were often played life, and from the good songs, only Dante's Inferno and Brainwashed were the only good songs on this album that were ever played live even later with Stu Block as singer.