Burnt Offerings

During my days of metal infancy this was one of my favorite albums. It was accessible, and a lot of fun (at the time), and there's nothing wrong with being either, lots of the albums I enjoy now are too. I recently pulled this one out, remembering how much I used to enjoy it. Unfortunately, the flaws of this album were what my ears registered, and by the end of Dante's Inferno I was thoroughly pissed.

This album has potential, and loads of it. Iced Earth has potential - potential that they realized to superb effect in the previous album. But something goes drastically wrong in Burnt Offerings. It feels like they had a bunch of 3-4 minute songs and one 8 minute song that they weren't satisfied with - they felt they had to stretch em out, and did so by inserting random meaningless acoustic sections and interludes. And the result is a very confused mess. Maybe Jon Schaffer felt that it added to the atmospheric character of the music, but rather than that, they tend to become distractions.

Night of the Stormrider was a riff driven album; at not point did they seem short of another riff to fill the gap or to push the songs in new directions. They attempt something different with this album, and fail to pull it off. It may simply be the case of an unfinished debate on how to develop their music which shows here, but whatever it is, they seem on several occasions to merely drift along, devoid of ideas, devoid of interesting things left in their locker, but just pulling the song along for the sake of it. Coherent development is the key to good metal music, and if you can do it effectively with acoustic interludes such as on Burnt Offerings and Creator Failure then I have no problem with it. But meaningless meandering such as on the direction-less Last December or the hugely cumbersome Burning Oasis serves no purpose other than to run the album into the ground.

Yes, Matt Barlow has one heck of a voice, and his style of delivery perfectly suits the acoustic interlude, but the problem is that most of the time the interludes aren't compatible with the songs. Most of the time the interludes come after the song has outlived its worth, and is just chugging along aimlessly, which doesn't help their cause one bit, and that they invariably simply return to the old patterns after the interlude without even a hint of development worsens it. The notable exception on this point is Dante's Inferno, where I can't fault them for development, but here they fail on another count, which is keeping the listener's interest. It is understandable, given the size of the theme they chose to deal with, that the song would be fairly long, but there're too many ups and downs in it, and the listener gives up hope after a point.

Thrash metal Iced Earth are not, not since the end of Travel in Stygian, whatever their pretensions towards it are, and their brand of melodic music is driven by precisely that, melody. So when the melodies get stale and begin to fail them, there's obviously a problem. The interludes represent the nadir of the problem. And it’s not just one problem, its several. Take track 2 - "Last December" as a case in point. They start off with a mildly interesting acoustic guitar intro, and the song takes a while to pick up pace, which it does manage to do, eventually, but it just goes on and on and on. There's no variety to the song, no moment which makes you sit up and take notice. I'm not expecting a full fledged thrash break out of Iced Earth, but the odd time change or a slight structural shift wouldn't have hurt them. Last December drones on and on in the same vein as it started for 3 and a half minutes and after the magic of Burnt Offerings takes away all the enthusiasm one may have developed for the album. Diary is a bit of an iffy song - it takes a long long time to get anywhere, and if you've managed to stay awake till then it’s enjoyable and gets quite good towards the end - on one of the few occasions where they manage to get the interludes to work. Brainwashed and Burning Oasis are the point where this album fails though. They display a total lack of focus, a lack of interest even, at certain points, and a disappointing feeling of filler about them. Filler is something an album shouldn't have, and two in a row is very hard to sit through. Particularly the musical quagmire that is Burning Oasis, with two, identical acoustic sections, with very little apparent purpose, apart from keeping the clock ticking. Creator Failure, as I mentioned earlier, works, with the acoustic bit, as on Burnt Offerings starting an interesting shift in the song, and I still fall for that heavenly falsetto section every time I listen to it. But with The Pierced Spirit one really gets a feeling of "Haven't I heard enough of this already?", and Dante's Inferno, as I mentioned earlier, while fun in parts, is really too long.

All in all, this album is too long, too stop-start, and too full of meaningless blather to make the enjoyable parts, which there are a fair few of, worth it. Especially to the more experienced metal head who's explored much more of the realms of metal and has begun to expect a sense of flow, direction and coherence of his albums, this represents a major failure. Not because it’s that bad. But because it could have been so much better with a little effort. It may sound good to the beginner, but that’s as far as it gets. A couple of years on, and it won't sound all that good anymore. I'm giving it a 55 only for its starter value, and the brilliance of Burnt Offerings and Creator Failure.