Iced Earth - _Dark Saga_
(Century Media, 1996)
by: Adrian Bromley (7 out of 10)
From the depths of hell and the gutters of the big city comes the tales of comic book hero/anti-hero Spawn as told by melodic thrash metal outfit Iced Earth. Tampa Bay, Florida's well-known progressive thrashers return with a cool concept album that deals with the story-lines, characters and life of the Spawn comic series (a comic that sells more than half a million copies every issue). A dark tragedy, the album pursues the rather dark and vile side of Spawn for the most part, but there are glimpses of life, love and understanding with somewhat of a dark overtone in the lyrics and music. Following in the footsteps of progressive metallers Queensryche and Savatage, Iced Earth's latest can be easily seen as a carbon copy of the works of those two bands, but with heavier riffs, screams and determination to maintain a heaviness for the majority of the album, Iced Earth steps away from the aforementioned band's set musical styles - though _DS_ is not as heavy as their past efforts, _Night Of The Stormrider_ and _Burnt Offerings_. Some great ideas and visions flow from such cuts as "Violate," "The Last Laugh," "Scarred" and the opening number/title track. A cool concept record that manages to keep the listener going from start to finish.

(article published 12/8/1996)


RSS Feed RSS   Facebook Facebook   Twitter Twitter  ::  Mobile : Text  ::  HTML : CSS  ::  Sitemap

All contents copyright 1995-2024 their individual creators.  All rights reserved.  Do not reproduce without permission.

All opinions expressed in Chronicles of Chaos are opinions held at the time of writing by the individuals expressing them.
They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of anyone else, past or present.