Night of the Stormrider

After Jon kicked Gene Adam out of Iced Earth, he picked John Greely as his follow-up. He isn't Dio or Belladonna, but he is definitely a better choice than Gene and can hit some high notes if he is in shape. Also his lesser raw voice is a good contrast to the raw sound this album has.

Night of the Stormrider merges the energy with the melody of Iced Earth, so instead of choosing between heavy or thrash, you get both of it in all songs. The choir in the intro of the first song Angels Holocaust brings some excitement. The opener shines with tempo switches and climaxes over and over again and ends with an epic solo. Who could have expected that Iced Earth will be something like this one year ago? It's as if they have blended the whole debut album into one song and have a new singer sing over it. And instead of a clear end it goes over to the title song.

Stormrider, which is supposed to be something like the title song of this album, is the only 100% thrash song on this album and maybe in the whole existence of Iced Earth. Even though nowadays Jon Schaffer nails it live, he might have the anger in his voice, but only John Greely and nobody else (this was formerly sung live on a show in Wuppertal 1991, where Gene Adam was still the singer) can bring the sheer anger and ecstase with his voice. On the following song The Path I Choose the energy is sustained, but they have slowed down a bit. It shows perfectly that Iced Earth aren't satisfied with only one kind of a musical style and Schaffer always wanted to experiment with tempo switches and melodic arrangement between aggressive passages. You can also clearly hear out that he got a lot of inspiration from Metallica, I can repeatedly find some influences from ...and Justice for all or Master of Puppets here and there. Also to hear the gallopping riffs from Iron Maiden are undebatable and still exist even in the modern works of Iced Earth. Especially these gallopping riffs are dominant here and later on the finale song. Casual listeners as well as Iced Earth fans see Night of the Stormrider as their best work for the great effort in combining thrash metal with melodic, almost power metal like elements. Also, this album shines with versatility. Unlike later works like Something Wicked of The Glorious Burden, Iced Earth don't stick with one core style from beginning to the end, instead the songs present different emotions and atmospheres. This is shown best in the last 3 songs Desert Rain, Pure Evil and Travel in Stygian.

Desert Rain has kind of a doomsday atmosphere with a menacing intro that evolves into that mid-tempo thrash monster, while Pure Evil goes all out and the only break you have in the middle part is just to prepare you for the even more aggressive part with Greely's high pitched screams and then you have a reckless trash part with a sick solo. There won't be many songs after this one where Schaffer offers no compromises and leaves out any melodies and just gives us angry parts.

The best song and one of the greatest in the history of Iced Earth stays Travel in Stygian. John Greely offers a the angrier sides of 80s thrash vocal performances. The song itself is 9 minutes long, but you won't notice this duration once you're in it. They go all out again. Is epic thrash a thing? Because this would describe this song the best! You have Schaffer's trademark, the gallopping riffs almost all through the 9 minutes, the solo is wicked and the tempo switches are just perfectly set! All this creates a perfect atmosphere for the end of the story about the Stormrider.

What bugs me in most of Iced Earth albums are always these interludes. Jon Schaffer wasn't known for granting their listeners a big plate of songs on his releases. Most of them didn't even have 10 in total. This release only consists of 9 songs and when you're into this album, you have to realize that two of the 9 songs are just interludes. Maybe it's not as bad as on their debut album, but it ruins the expectations in some cases like here. Before the Vision and Reaching the End are about 1 minute long, yes they are contributing to the story, other than on Framing Armageddon, but they could have at least written full songs from them, instead of just filling the gaps and the setlist on the back side of the CD case. Next to this it must be said that Mystical End is the weakest song on this album. It starts promising and the melodic touch on this song is very appealing, however the middle part just ruins the whole build up, since you get that 1 minute long repetitive passage with a riff that might be funny to play on the guitar, but doesn't sound in any way great or exciting, and if repeated for a minute, it's just annoying. So like Burnt Offerings, this album suffers from unnecessary interludes and a weak song, which, again, is quite painful for a release with that few songs.

However, if you leave out the only downside of this album, you will have 6 perfect examples in how to create great metal in the 90s, since the other stuff that existed in that time was... not that good. Night of the Stormrider was the bar the band set for themselves and they had to be compared with this epic release with every other record they wrote after that, which is one of the reasons why most fans weren't that satisfied with later works anymore.