The Glorious Burden

I had pretty low expectations on this from the start. Sure, The Reckoning single brought us some really nice thrashing with the title track and a solid rocking Valley Forge, but then also two mediocre ballads á classic late Iced Earth, an essential addition to any post-Burnt Offerings album. Also, with all the praise Jon gave to the album I just got even more doubtful, as everyone knows his head is further up his ass than Lars Ulrich's (although the drunken episode was pretty hilarious. "TIM WILL HAVE PRUNE JUICE!!!"). And I don't really trust a man who says something like Burnt Offerings is his worst work. And with the patriotic (erm, excuse me, "historical") subject, this is pretty much bound to fail. It just doesn't feel like something you can build an entire album on and stay interesting and inspired. And I was correct.

The Glorious Burden has many major weaknesses that's been very evident on all Iced Earth albums of late, but here they shine in all their splendour and crappiness. First of all... the riffs. Sure, Jon has been recycling old riffs for god knows how long now, but this is downright depressing. The Reckoning was impressive at first, but when you hear songs like Attila and Waterloo, the lack of inventive riffs is truly astonishing. They all sound the same; same boring and faceless triplets with the chorus melodies played on top of them, on pretty much every last song. And those who don't follow this exact pattern (Red Baron/Blue Max comes to mind) still give a very familiar I've-heard-this-before feeling. Damn you, Jon, retire while you still have some dignity in you! It's obvious you can't write an albums worth of good songs anymore. There's still some good stuff to be found here, but you get to sift through alot of boring and repetitive crap to get there.

The few good moments on here... The Reckoning (Don't Tread On Me) has some of the most intense riffs on here, though they're ridiculously uncreative. However, Tim makes this a good kick in the balls with his monstrous high pitched voice. Owens is just about the best part of the album, and the only band member who holds it together. Otherwise, we get lots of random unnecessary double bass drumming, unoriginal riffs and barely audible bass, and that just doesn't cut it. Oh right, I'm talking good parts. Right.. "AAAAAAAAAAAH! Greenface!" Yeah, this is good stuff. Tim shrieks like a madman on the chorus, and also owns you on the line right before said chorus; "I'll be where the metal meets the meat!" The song also features some really nice down-tuned thrashing riffs that are almost not pathetically uncreative. Almost. Valley Forge alternates between acoustic and distorted, and is pretty decent as well. Those are the only songs that are actually good, and then the rest has a few decent moments. Red Baron/Blue Max features some pretty awesome chorus shrieks again, and is fairly memorable overall, although the Maiden-wannabe lead section is laughable. Attila has the least inventive riffs on the album, but a very nice chorus and epic opening melody. Vastly boring for the most part, though, but not terrible.

Then there are some really BAD songs, too. The intro Star Spangled Banner is one of the most laughable moments in the history of music, we all know that. Let's not speak of it again, ever. It fades into Declaration Day, which plods along and doesn't get anywhere, and is just mindnumbingly boring throughout. When The Eagle Cries and Hollow Man... standard IE ballads, you know the drill. Nothing new here, but we're getting used to that with this band. Boring and mediocre, both of them. Then finally Waterloo, which just plain bores me like hell. Go eat yellow snow, Schaffer. Or even better, write me another Travel In Stygian, and none of this overdramatic boring crap. Hell, even another Damien would make me most pleased - at least that's overdramatic with style and coolness, something this album lacks completely.

And then the much acclaimed trilogy, Gettysburg 1863. Hey, this ain't bad at all! Though I have some complaints with these too: It's so fucking predictable! The way the long instrumental sections are placed in the songs just feels so incredibly forced. However, Jon does redeem himself considering the fact that these sections in themselves are pretty fucking good despite the lack of creativity in the way they're vowen into songs. All three sound pretty different and have their own defining qualities and great moments, but my favourite is the one on the first part of the trilogy; The Devil To Pay. The melancholic rendition of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" is one of the most powerful moments in Iced Earth's career (at least among their later post-BO material). Though like I said, all 3 instrumental sections are really well done, and stand as the highlights of the album. Otherwise, the songs are pretty standard stuff for this album, and don't really stand out much. Still, I'll say this trilogy easily owns just about anything else on the album. See, just about every song on the entire album is overly epic. But on a 30+ minute epic (if you take the trilogy as one whole song), the epic grandness just seems to fit. The orchestrations on here stay in the background and add atmosphere instead of ever getting full focus, which I'll say works pretty well. Especially during the verses of the songs, they add some real power to the marching beats of the riffs.

All in all though, The Glorious Burden is (not surprisingly) quite bad. Predictable and unoriginal songwriting manages to stand out as the main weaknesses on here, but there's alot of details all over that could be complained about. However, there's also some good moments placed randomly all over, and frankly, I'm too lazy to point all this out. Figure it out yourself if you can be bothered. In conclusion, this is by all means not a really bad album, just pretty damn boring and predictable.