The Glorious Burden

Jon Schaffer has lost his third singer. But this time, he didn't kick him out himself, but instead, Barlow has decided to leave the band. It's totally understandable that people might have a problem with losing their favorite singer of a band, especially when he is replaced by the caricature of one of the biggest idols in metal: Tim Owens. The best thing Tim can do: High screams. Seriously, since I follow Tim Owens' career, this is kinda the only thing he's famous for - high notes. Personally, there is no other reason to listen to anything Tim has ever put out. The albums with Priest were not bad, but not for Tim's performances and on the live albums of Priest he sounded like a younger clone of Halford. It was the dumbest decision to replace him with Rob Halford again in 2005, but that's not the matter now. There is quite a simple formula: the moment Tim is in a band, the band needs to do extra effort to keep the whole thing together. In Iced Earth's case, Jon Schaffer wanted to go the safe path and just copy and pasted some stuff from Something Wicked... and Demons & Wizard's first album.

You could also see this as their test, if Tim can be on the level with Barlow, and this is why they haven't dared too many experiments here. This is something what you could also spectate on their live shows, when Tim this time actually sounded different to Barlow. Also he isn't able to sound doomy and sinister. Instead, whenever he tries this, he is sounding rather energetic and angry. So these are the main differences between him and Barlow.

So what do we have here? The first song, Declaration Day, sounds like they wanted to have Tim's best shot, and him to sing as powerful as possible. The first passage is the one Tim sings on mid range, but on the second passage he sings very high and that for about half a minute. It's really amazing, what power this guy has and the first live shows with him showed that he can nail the highest notes with barely any effort. Of course Jon Schaffer has tried to show us the best side from Tim, so you have a full load of fast, energetic and vitale songs on this album, started with the angry The Reckoning, where they go fast forward, have thrashy staccato riffs and Tim rather screeches than sings. The most epic song on this album is Attila. It's a 5 minute power metal monster with some resemblances to Manowar (excluding the long screams of course)

The biggest weakness Tim has is singing calm and emotional. When the Eagle Cries, Hollow Man and Valley Forge are the (half-)ballads on this album and while When the Eagle Cries with its embarrassing attempt to mourn the victims of the Twin Tower Attack and its praise of the American Army ("The sleeping giant is asleep no longer") is a total failure, the only problem the other 2 songs have is ripper's insensitive voice. He just can't sing songs like these. Whoever remembers the ballads from the two previous albums like Melancholy, Watching over me and Ghost of Freedom, won't make it through the ballads of this album, since the voice just doesn't fit and Tim didn't put enough effort in these songs. There was Close to You on Judas Priest's Demolition, which was Owens' best performance on a ballad yet and it looks like it will be the only one that he actually nailed. Just to be clear, he couldn't sing the other ballads from Iced Earth live either, that's why Jon didn't let him sing Watching Over Me live I guess.

The worst song on this album is Waterloo. Lyrics are OK, but it's too long, at least the structure is too uninteresting. I have that feeling that I hear the chorus on this song over 20 times and the riff sounds good in the intro, but is just annoying afterwards. Musically it's the counterpart to Greenface, which is much shorter, more aggressive and shows the best thing Tim can do.

The album concludes with the Gettysburg trilogy, consisting of The Devil to pay, Hold at all Costs and High Water Mark. This 30 minute composition isn't just the band itself, but features the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. Most listeners might only care about this trilogy and dump the rest. This song tells the story of the battle at Gettysburg and Schaffer tried to write down the details of the war in the first and third part of the trilogy, while the Hold at all Costs is about the struggle of two friends who had to fight against each other. From the 3 songs, High Water Mark is the most finished song. The instrumental part with the orchestra keeps exciting from beginning to end and it has a tragic ending with a good interaction of band and orchestra.

The production also reminds of the Something Wicked album. At least they have arranged the songs better here, so you don't have one angry and one calm song after another, instead you have a row of angry songs, so you keep the energy for a while. The acoustic version of When The Eagle Cries is clearly better than the original version, which doesn't say much. They could have omitted both of them. Overall this album has only 2 actual bad songs, on the rest Jon has tried to get the best out of Tim that he could and most of it really did work out. People shouldn't categorize in singers or genres in Iced Earth, because the head behind this band is Jon and since Dark Saga we should know that he simply does whatever he wants, and most of it simply works.