Iced Earth

When I first listened to Iced Earth’s self titled album, I was already used to the Barlow era Iced Earth, and I was eager to experience the album that started Iced Earth’s quest in the metal world. When I first heard the album, I nearly turned it off, because I couldn’t stand Gene Adams’ horrible singing. A few months later, I popped it back into my CD player and listened to the CD all the way through. Needless to say, it’s a good album, but there is still something I can’t get over...which is Gene Adams’ voice. He’s not awful, but he isn’t exactly Bruce Dickinson either.

Adams’ vocals tend to vary from “shut the Hell up with that God awful high-pitched wail” to “Meh; he’s not that bad”. When he sings he tends to go into this high pitched wailing and draws it out a little too much. When he’s not handling the more heavy vocal parts, he sounds decent on the softer parts (Written On The Walls is a good example where the song breaks into a slow melody fest). Even when he’s doing the slower parts I can’t get over his whiney gritty voice. If he would have taken some singing lessons he might not be bad, but merely okay.

Musically, this album is a goldmine. The rhythm guitar goes into some seriously fast palm muting, quickly come out to reveal some melody, then falls back into it’s tight formation with lead guitar. This really backs up the fact that Jon Schaffer has some incredible agility and stamina with his hands to be able to shred power-thrash like this. When the rhythm isn’t completely mowing you down with speed, the lead takes control and fills the atmosphere with melody that takes you to the icy plains to freeze your ass off. Now that we’re having fun, can we get rid of Gene Adams and make this album “very good,” instead of just “okay“?

I enjoy the music very much because it varies in speed and melody, as well as songwriting. It’s an excellent first album for a metal band, but I’m guessing either Jon Schaffer was desperate and settled for Adams or he let him sing out of loyalty to their friendship. I love everything about this album except Adams’ vocals. Jon and Randy being the riff masters that they are made this album more of a pleasurable listen. I’ve always loved Schaffer’s riff style, even if it sometimes seems simple or reused.

The bad production kind of irks me with it‘s hollow sound, but it’s still a pleasure to listen to from time to time. All in all, the album is worth buying if you can learn to at least somewhat adapt to mediocre vocals. I’m just glad that Schaffer got rid of him when he wrote Stormrider