Post
by Kai Stromler » Thu Jan 15, 2004 11:45 am
reviving this one, to avoid making a new topic...
After a lot of controversy, a long wait, and several critical member changes, Iced Earth finally released The Glorious Burden this week. I'm not sure that it's the album anyone was expecting, but it's definitely an Iced Earth record, and many ways definitive of the band's entire career.
The CD opens with an electric rendition of the US national anthem (except in Europe), which sounds exactly as a *metal* version of this hymn SHOULD sound. It's tight, faithful, without a hint of irony, but not slavishly scraping or pompous. This is not manipulation along the lines of the current administration's use of the bawling "God Bless America", but a simple and almost unconscious statement of true patriotism: allegiance that doesn't require a terrorist attack for prompting, in the tradition of "1776" from Something Wicked.... It leads seamlessly into the first real track on the record, "Declaration Day".
This song, set in Philly at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, is the best of the four American-patriotic tracks on the main record by far. Despite some clunky lyrics (an inevitability, as it's hard to rhyme "declaration" with anything), it rocks, and sets up the cause of American independence as another fight-for-what-you-believe-in scenario familiar to longtime Iced Earth listeners from album cuts off everything from the self-titled to even Horror Show (if we take a line or two in "Dracula" and stretch it a mile). It's a natural lead-in to "When The Eagle Cries", even if it's not a great album-opener in itself. Still, it's better than "Wolf" (Horror Show) in this slot...even if that's not saying a whole lot.
"...Eagle..." was about the most controversial song on the record before release, though it won't be the most reviled now that people have actually listened to the CD. The big question was how Iced Earth could have anything relevant and non-exploitative to say about September 11, and that has been entirely resolved. The full-band treatment is superior to the "unplugged" take found on The Reckoning (the dumbest EP-picking in metal history, as we'll see), and the lyrics are restrained, nonpartisan, and respectful. No doubt due to the increased lead time (as well as plain superior talent, for most IE fans), it beats the pants off Neil Young's execrable "Let's Roll", the only other song out there to head-on tackle the start of the current war on terror.
In the current tracklisting, "...Eagle..." leads into "The Reckoning", but could have easily skipped straight to "Attila". It's normal for Iced Earth albums to sag in the middle, but this one's ridiculous. Any of the three songs in between could easily be read as a low point in Iced Earth history, even going back to Gene Adam and 600 copies sold on the self-titled. "The Reckoning" is the song everyone was afraid "...Eagle..." was going to be. Despite the picture of the gunfighter in the liner notes, it's difficult to read this one as anything else than a "going-after-Osama" song. It's the second-most lyrically uninspired song on this record, and the music, with Ripper's vocals closer than anywhere else to Halford-imitation, is too close for comfort -- or interest, really -- to Judas Priest. This one, though, looks almost like "Burning Times" next to "Greenface", the song that follows it.
This is the most lyrically uninspired song on Glorious Burden, with fewer lines than any other in the mode of "Dragon's Child" from the last album. It's clear than Jon promised his buddies in the Special Forces to put on a song about them, but when writing time came around, the well ran dry. It would have been a better tribute to them to leave this pedestrian music and stupid poetry off the record entirely. It's not as explicitly topical as Aska's "Delta Force" (best Special-Forces song yet), and it's not as evocative as Morbid Angel's "Where The Slime Live", which even Kalmah has yet to beat as a swamp-and-fen song. Iced Earth just can't write wet-and-tropical; it's a shame that Jon didn't realize this before he penned "Greenface".
The track that follows, "Valley Forge", sums up what most of the scene dreaded this album would be. The music is decent, but the lyrics are a tired and exploitative right-leaning polemic with too obvious an application to present situations. There's no law against putting politics in metal (Nuclear Assault and Sacred Reich used do it all the time), but the trick is to do it without having the music creak under the weight of the agenda. The creaking almost drowns out the guitars here, and if the album ended here, a lot of people would stamp it as unmitigated suck.
Fortunately, the next song up is "Attila", the last Barlow-written track (Ripper has most of the lead vox, but that's Matt singing the 'Roman' parts in front of the chorus), which opens with the kind of inspired music that went MIA for the last 14 minutes, breaks out of the strictly American context, and brings Iced Earth back to familiar ground: ambitious barbarians versus staid and complacent Christians. The interplay of Schaffer-led Huns and Barlow-led Romans in the bridge is really special, worth more than the chuckle it'll also bring to the listeners who've been following the news. It's not the best metal song ever written about this figure (Enthroned's "Scourge of God" still holds that title, despite the neo-black metal touches Jon puts into this one), but it's a step in the right direction for this CD.
Next comes somewhat of a valley: "Hollow Man", the last track on The Reckoning, which should have been left off this one and replaced with "Waterloo". It's clearly a leftover from Horror Show, a piece about the Invisible Man that couldn't be tied back firmly enough to the character, and it doesn't rock nearly as much as anything else on this CD, even the songs that suck. Horror Show was well-woven with regard to highs and lows, but this CD is much more consistent in sound and feel, and "Hollow Man" feels out of place. With the four tracks indicated, it's difficult to see how Jon could have picked worse tracks for The Reckoning, given that this song, as a leftover, and the unplugged version of "...Eagle...", as the 'fresh kill', had to be on there. Why didn't he put on "Attila" and "Waterloo", which would have dispelled the controversy and made people want to buy the record, instead of shit like "The Reckoning" and "Valley Forge"?
Last of the "opening act" (apt as will be seen) is Ripper's first lyrical effort, "Red Baron/Blue Max", which is saved from occasionally crummy lyrics by superior music beneath. Steve Harris would be ashamed of some of these lines. Iron Maiden is the obvious point of comparison for this song, and Iced Earth holds up well despite the lyrical handicap -- which, honestly, is only along the lines of "To Tame A Land" as opposed to the head-breaking awfulness of "Quest For Fire". Some notes in the booklet, as per the explanations in the Gettysburg trilogy, might have been nice here for fans who don't know that "Blue Max" (der blaue Max) was slang for the Pour la Merite, the Imperial German equivalent of the US Medal of Honor.
Now the record begins for real. For the record, "Gettysburg" is only slightly longer than the entirety of Slayer's Reign In Blood, and if the gods of metal are just, will occupy a similar place in the musical canon of this elite extreme musical art that has been developing over the last thirty-five years. On these three songs, Jon Schaffer does the impossible: top "Dante's Inferno", which was previously regarded as this band's ultimate career statement and high-water mark. Even without the structuring provided by the film of the same title (and the musical riffs stolen with varying degrees of shamelessness from the film's score), the actual music here and the emotions expressed in the lyrics are head and shoulders above anything else in this record, and the great majority of Iced Earth's catalog. This is why Matt was fired: the rest of the CD seems like it would work better with his voice in most parts, but here and here alone Ripper sounds like he really *belongs*: like he was brought up through Winter's Bane and Judas Priest to sing this epic, on this record.
"The Devil To Pay" takes on the first day, weaving together marches, folk, and blues (Ripper's attack on the main-body verses is really special against the classic IE pounding below) with the solid structuring of Iced Earth's trademark guitars setting off the orchestra with skill and aplomb. The feel is often comparable to the Something Wicked trilogy, but as Jon leads the orchestra into a full-on gallop past the nine-minute mark and into the final lyrical block, it becomes unmistakeable: this is the best writing IE's done, and a surprisingly early candidate for album of the year. The track winds down to lead into the intro to "Hold At All Costs", but this is just a calm before the next storm, lit by expressive horns repeating a passage from "Valley Forge".
The cribbing from Lo Armistead that opens "Hold..." is slightly misleading. As Ripper's plaintive (the one part that Matt might have handled better) voice reaches the end of the last line, the characteristic Iced Earth riffing rips in, setting up the tension of the second day on the Union left. Jon and the band do admirable justice to the spirit of Chamberlain (the most famous alum of my alma mater) and the 20th Maine in their unbending defense. With less space in the orchestration and more punching, this is a fierce headbanger even in its anthemic choruses, an excellent contrast to the arching scopes of the movements that precede and follow it as well as a perfect tribute to the hellish combat at the very limit of human endurance: on a forty-degree slope, one side out of water and the other out of ammunition. The end fades and becomes almost operatic in its piling of choruses, but this is needed to set up the masterful third movement, "High Water Mark", which transitions in a storm of cannon fire to the third and final day of the battle.
This song is cribbed almost in its entirety from the second half of the 1993 film version of Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, Gettysburg. This is no great sin; Iron Maiden's best epic, "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner", is cut almost line for line from Coleridge's poem, and their biggest hit, "Number of the Beast", is based entirely on the film The Omen. The song develops through planning (including Jon Schaffer's gravelly Tom-Beringer-imitation) and the initial cannonade to Pickett's Charge itself and through to the aftermath, in which Jon finishes the work that was begun by Longstreet and furthered by Shaara: finally fixing the blame for the disaster on Robert E. Lee, to the chagrin of generations of Southern loyalists who staked their reputations on proving that the old man never made a mistake. Apart from the history, the music is excellent, an amazing fusion of heavy metal and orchestra that has seldom been executed so flawlessly (take note of the 'heavy'; Euro-power metal bands have done this as well, but they too often fail the heaviness test). The first cribbings from the film score strike around the seven-minute mark, but these are speedily resolved as the guitars lead into the charge. Rich Christy's rock-solid drums keep the pace amid the cannon fire, and Jon's color-sergeant guitars march around the edge of the strings, dressing the line and keeping the whole on course up into the wall and into the final movement, Ripper's mournful declamation (as Lee) on the carnage around him. (I've always wanted to write a classic rock-critic line like that; thanks to this album for giving me the chance.) The band crunches back up amid dischordant horn tones in a feel reminiscent of the end of "Dante's Inferno", and the song fades back down into a short and melancholy violin duet. The battle (and the album) is over, but it isn't truly the end.
With "Gettysburg", Jon has justified this album, his band, his lapses in judgment, his occasionally uninformed politics, his delusions of grandeur, his entire career, and his life as a whole. It's that good. Even more so than "Dante's Inferno", this is the answer that people will point to as the *reason* for this band, maybe in a hundred years as the point and worth of metal (so that's maybe reaching a little...so what?). But the question remains: why was there a need for the rest of the album? If the first 37 minutes on this CD were released on their own, it'd be reviled, and legitimate questions would be asked about Jon's writing ability and his intelligence in cutting Matt loose. I've currently got my CD-player programmed to skip half the non-Gettysburg full songs on this release; with the level of talent and ability shown on the last half-hour in the same band, this shouldn't be necessary. The Glorious Burden is a badly flawed record tacked onto the front of a flawless one; at this point, we can only hope that the Set album (allegedly next, though it's been 'next' for nearly six years and three releases) will follow in the line of Gettysburg and fullfil the promise of Something Wicked..., rather than follow the first half of this CD and become an insult to the fans.
And now that that's over, it's time to wait for Exodus...damn labels waiting till a month after it comes out in Europe...
--K
