Burnt Offerings

The first I ever heard from Iced Earth, the band surrounding mastermind Jon Schaffer, were a couple of songs from “Night of the Storm Rider” and I immediately started loving the band’s intricate, thrashing riffs combined with a gloomy, epic feel to the general mix. The singer was good, but nothing outstanding. A few years later I got “The Dark Saga”. A different singer was on board and this time I was impressed by the vocals. Matt Barlow is to me to this day one of the best singers in metal. His very deep tone as well as his capability of combining melody with aggressiveness is truly a force to be reckoned with. I really liked the album, but to a certain degree I also missed the riffing style of “Night of the Storm Rider”. Anyhow, eventually I came across “Burnt Offerings” which was actually recorded before “The Dark Saga” and that was it!

Probably Iced Earth’s “meanest” album, “Burnt Offerings” overflows with aggressiveness and darkness and includes the two things that truly got my attention from the band in the first place: the aforementioned intricate, powerful riffing and Barlow’s vocals. All instruments are played very proficiently and besides taking care of his guitar duties, Schaffer also acts as a backing vocalist in several tracks, and he has a more than decent voice for that role.

The title track is meant to be scary, and at least at the beginning it brings to memory the music of several horror films like The Omen and The Exorcist (which comes as no surprise, since the very title of the song/album is taken from a horror film), and after the spooky intro it hits the listener with a massive, brutal guitar riff. Other songs that I’d like to mention here are “Brainwashed”, a powerful attack against organized belief systems, and “Diary” that's heavy, powerful, and also introduces melodic, though not at all mellow, passages, which add to the dark and sinister atmosphere of the music. However, the obvious highlight of this record is the epic, 16 minute track “Dante’s Inferno”. Inspired by the “Inferno” section of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, this track, as in the book, takes one through the nine levels of hell, both lyrically and musically. Many may consider a piece this long quite hard to digest, but it has so many rhythm changes, build ups, and tension and release dynamics that at least for me it’s really appealing.

Mythology, dark fantasy, anguish, terror, anger, and a bit of social criticism. All in all, this is a truly remarkable effort by a great band and the debut of Matt Barlow in Iced Earth. That alone is worth a listen.