Burnt Offerings

Burnt Offerings is an example of an album where diligence, ambition, and skill are applied to songs that are epic, dark, cohesive, and downright razor-sharp in order to form a whole that's every bit as strong as its parts and then some. We are talking about an album that's become the iconic height for Iced Earth and power metal as a whole. This may be power metal, but expecting cheese and happiness is expecting the wrong things here. Okay, expecting happiness for yourself is reasonable from the mighty melodies and killer songs, but this is NOT happy music. This is one of power metal's darker and fiercer offerings thanks to a lot of thrash influence, and a healthy dose of mid-90's melancholy. This is an album that reflects upon death, Hell, and God's letdowns for mankind after all. In addition to being a goddamn legendary bombshell in its own right, Burnt Offerings would play a heavy role in establishing the rougher and darker American school of power metal. With all the fury of Hell's flames and the might of vengeful winds, Burnt Offerings displays all the ferocity of 80's thrash coupled with the Iron Maiden-like sophisticated and epic, yet memorable songwriting, plus an infernal energy and every musician in top condition giving peak performances.

Right from the get-go, Burnt Offerings leads you in with a dark keyboard melody to then shock you with a barrage of sharp, fast-paced riffs at levels of intensity similar to that of Ride the Lightning with melodic complexity and progressions from savage thrashing to dark, melodic leads and soft, but gloomy and mystical rests that would make Iron Maiden impressed. Everything present on this album has a might to it that makes every moment feel explosive, and an intricacy to make every minute of it feel special and engaging. The guitar riffs are powerful, the melodies are sharp, and Randall Shawver's soloing is as energetic, impressive, and wild as ever, with Jon Schaffer providing solid composition and a tight rhythmic backbone with his guitar. Newly acquired vocalist Matt Barlow also has an impressive presence on here with his booming baritone register as well as a hair-raising falsetto which occasionally comes out at really dark moments like near the end of "Creator Failure" where he sounds downright demonic despite singing in a clean register, he really brings a chilling energy to his performance on here. His melodic singing, as well as his shouts are top-notch as well. He just brims with passion and never lets up, even on softer parts, skillfully mixing melody with savagery and darkness with his voice just as well as Shawver and Schaffer do with their guitars. Burnt Offerings also shows us some of the fastest and most aggressive drumming in 90's power metal, occasionally approaching blast beat speeds with really punchy hits on the snare giving even more energy to the guitars, hinting at strong influence from more extreme varieties of metal. Everyone gives 110% of their energy and the massive, involved composition that's still somehow easily memorable makes it all the more apparent.

What Burnt Offerings puts out is a melodic, yet dark and infernal series of songs that show off the musicians at the best of their abilities and with the highest regard for creating compositions that flow well and feel grand. Every song features strong melody and an impassioned vocal delivery, with just the right balance of catchiness and grandiosity. The vocal tones and leads to songs like "Burnt Offerings" and "Brainwashed" give us the more catchy and signature Iced Earth sound at it's strongest. But, this album does go into more unorthodox directions with the passing of "Burning Oasis" and "Creator Failure" which are the darker and more demonic pieces on this album. The way they explore the elegant, but hellish atmosphere touched on in earlier songs, and expand it is something to be quite impressed with. Balancing a mixture of dark clean guitars, jagged riffs, ominous melodies, and the chilling performance of Barlow into a song with winding valleys and sharp peaks leads to the mid-album material being darker and less immediately catchy, but a solid series of spine-chilling growers. The motif of everything getting steadily darker and further from standard culminates in the massive 16-minute epic, a retelling of "Dante's Inferno" in song form with immense atmosphere and super-involved, epic progressions from one melody to the next, layer after layer, soft melody to thrashing storm, and with an ever increasing sense if doom as you get closer to the the bottom, the end, Satan himself. The buildup, payoff, as well as the variety in this one song has made it iconic for Iced Earth. It goes from ominous beginnings through ever increasing levels of terror towards the end where it all climaxes with ferocity. It all flows so well, feeling totally natural in a master display of songwriting. The elements of making smooth-flowing, but savage and dark melodic metal were combined to give us Burnt Offerings, an album that maxes out everything dark in the world of power metal and makes something that truly stands above its contemporaries with its solid feeling as a whole, and in its individual songs.

Burnt Offerings is one of the heavyweight, classic albums of power metal for many reasons. It exudes a dark and aggressive sound that many bands had not bothered with before, and does so in a way that exceeds expectations when it comes to creating massive songs. Every member gives it their all, and Matt Barlow especially gives Burnt Offerings a mighty and explosive voice with a range that makes him ideal for all moods the music tries to set, from rage, to might, to sadness, and terror, Barlow does them all with gusto. The heavily involved composition with intros, builds, and interludes allows for songs with many interesting parts, and an operatic feeling for the music to match the vocals. Even with all of that complexity, everything is easily memorable and worthy of many re-visits. Everything falls into place with skill and the ambitious nature of Burnt Offerings does everything it can to make the music sound as big and as strong as possible. This is Iced Earth at their most ambitious, dark, and fierce, with some of their most iconic songs on display and the most effort put into generating exhilarating music. It is their masterpiece. Listen to it. My gushing is concluded.