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The Crucible of Dull - 45%
As I see it, within a genre of music/film/literature/art/etc. you like, you might not like something because it is bad, or it is boring. Bad is worse than boring, but well, at least being bad can bring some trainwreck appeal. The Crucible of Man is boring. The previous album, Framing Armageddon, had some pretty good stuff nestled within a pile of filler and the sound effect tracks between songs. The Crucible of Man does away with the sound effects but also does away with great songs, and Matt Barlow’s return to Iced Earth feels like Framing Armageddon’s filler spilled all over a whole album. It’s not so much plagued with Schaffer’s tendency to reuse riffs and stuff in acoustic breaks though those things happen here, but it’s a midpace album that kind of runs together without feeling like it’s going anywhere.
Ok, there are a few ok songs on here. The opener, Behold the Wicked Child, is probably the fastest song on here. The main riff isn’t that original, but it actually has some energy, and Barlow gets to cut loose and wail. The closer, Come What May, is pretty epic, featuring Barlow at his most emotive and hammy, though it suffers from Schaffer’s recent habit of over-muting and has an nondescript acoustic break in the middle. The single I Walk Alone is decent; despite a main riff featuring the slow sixth string muted power chord chugging that filled Framing Armageddon’s filler, it actually has some anger in it, with Barlow and Schaffer putting some snarl into the vocals. You also can’t have an IE album without a ballad, and A Gift or a Curse, featuring Schaffer doing vocals for almost a whole song for the first time since Stormrider, is ok and has one of the best solos out of IE in a while.
The rest of the album consists mostly of short midpace tracks that kind of blend into each other (not helped by the fact that most literally go right into the next, making chunks of the album run like a continuous song). The songwriting suffers a bit from Schaffer and friends’ tendency to sacrifice poetry for narration, and Barlow’s vocals are often kind of constrained. The production is decent, very similar to Framing Armageddon; you can hear everything though the bass is down in the mix (as is often the case in metal and Morrissound production). This album really isn’t bad... from some bands it might even be regarded as good. However if you’re looking to get into IE, and want to get all their albums, get this one first, because it’ll sound like a disappointment after some of the others.
