Iced Earth

In 1988 Jon Schaffer has changed the name of his band from Purgatory to Iced Earth, because of the death of a friend. (the one he dedicated Watching Over Me on 1998 album) Te demos from his band under the old name really could have been something great if they had the same chance as other big 80s bands. However, Jon Schaffer didn't quite think this through.

First of all, 4 of the songs you find here have already been in the 1989 demo Enter the Realm with the intro and Nightmares as the only exceptions. The songs were minimally changed, being slightly faster and having a slightly better production.

The new songs are actually good too, but Jon forgot that he hasn't a much qualified singer with him. He can sing the thrashy and cool stuff, Iced Earth and Colors sound great, but what he clearly lacks of is the deepness and emotion in his voice. At least he hasn't tried to improve his skills, what Jon Schaffer saw as reason to kick him out after this release. And I can totally understand him. Curse the Sky and Life & Death sound totally goofy for their relatively serious or deep lyrics. What annoys me the most is when Gene does one of these excited shrieks. Sometimes his voice just ruins it all. On When The Night Falls he isn't that bad, as a fact he does the chorus quite well and he nails the middle part on Written on the Walls.

Another flaw this album has are the 2 Instrumentals. I can't stand interludes at all, so Solitude is just a dead track to me. The Funeral is better and I like the spoken words, but with its 6 minutes it's just way too long. This makes it even worse because When The Night Falls has another long intro which sounds good, but is just too much after 2 Instrumentals in a row. So Iced Earth leave us with 6 complete songs on their debut album. Weirdly, while they have thought about re-releasing songs from Enter the Realm, they have completely left out their material from the Purgatory era which I really enjoyed and wished to hear on this album too. At least they could have replaced the instrumentals with them.

The old line-up has serious problems with Handling the new material. When the Night Falls and Life & Death (also Curse the Sky, but it's not completely new) should have been saved for better days with a better singer, but who could have thought back then that Jon considers to replace Gene? He even let him sing some demo songs from the next album live.