OK, let me stress this now: I do not consider myself a Nickelback fan. That said, I'm not like pretty much the entirety of the internet and hold them on a level of contempt that cannot be measured. If you despise them and don't think anything will ever change your mind on them, I urge you to go read something else, because this post is going into detail about the hatred for Nickelback and why I find it very extreme.
...To anyone still here expecting me to praise Nickelback to the heavens, you're also reading the wrong post. Sorry, I don't think they are the saviours of rock and roll or whatever you guys think they are. You can stay if you want, but don't be too surprised if I have to say stuff you don't like. I'm preaching to the minority of people out there who either haven't heard of Nickelback or don't get the hatred behind them.
OK, now that the biggest haters and fanboys of Nickelback have left the page, let me start by saying the obvious point that needs to be made.
Nickelback are not that bad.
Are they worthy of all of the hatred that so many people are determined to give them? No way!
Are they under-appreciated geniuses that history will look upon as a music revolution? Nope!
Are they a decent band? If you pushed me to answer that...yes.
OK, maybe decent isn't the best word: in their genre, let alone the music landscape, they are an average band. They can write catchy songs, Chad's vocals aren't that bad, their music is not so complicated you couldn't learn to play it with a few years of practice, their music is probably a little on the overproduced side and they have fun with their music. But those do not make them a great band. If you pardon the potential insult, they are somewhat like the Flo Rida (or Poison) of the post-grunge scene: they are big, but not necessarily because they are the best in the style.
Which immediately begs the question: WHY are they big? To which I have to give a somewhat controversial answer and a bit of a theory of mine: it's not the best bands in the style who help people realise they are fans of the style, it's the middle grade bands who help them.
Let me give you an example from thrash metal: just about everyone with even a passing interest in metal will know about Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax, as they are the biggest thrash metal bands out there at the minute. To just about every thrash metal fan, you cannot call yourself a thrash metal fan if you have not listened to all of their 80's material (plus the records released in 1990: most thrash diehards count them as 80's releases, which seems a bit suspicious to me considering they all were released more than halfway through the year, but I'll let the thrash diehards believe what they want to there...). But these thrash fans will also be able to name quite a few thrash bands who haven't broken into the mainstream or made it to the top of the thrash ladder, like Exodus, Testament, Death Angel and Heathen (and that's just from the Bay Area thrash scene: there's the Teutonic scene from Germany, to name another one, which gave us the Teutonic Trio of Kreator, Destruction and Sodom (some throw in Tankard and call it a Teutonic Big 4, but I personally think Teutonic Trio sounds cooler)). Many of them broke up before the 90's really begun and returned in the 2000's producing some amazing records (some of which, I would not be afraid to admit, are far better than anything the Big 4 (the casual name for the group of Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax) have produced in that time, although, admittedly, it's not too difficult to beat Metallica's stuff, as they've released two bad albums and one album which was decent...). To say these bands have a lot of respect from thrash fans would be an understatement, to say the least! But, without them, thrash pretty much floundered when the 90's hit: there weren't new releases of the style for people to check out and, gradually, the style pretty much died in the eyes of the mainstream (as did just about all metal, come to think of it...). People who liked what they heard of the Big 4 in the 90's couldn't find new stuff by other, well respected bands in the style to compare it with because there pretty much wasn't any other stuff. Throw in the fact this was before the internet really happened and you would literally have to find a fanzine about the style or know someone who was a huge thrash fan to have a chance to keeping up to date with it. Some amazing thrash albums from the 90's (believe me, there were a few) slipped through the cracks because there was nobody who was waving the banner for it in the mainstream. So, if you will, it's not the best bands holding the banner high that helps keep the scene together: it's the bands who aren't cut out to lead the charge who help keep it together, because they help the interested people stay there when their interest in the bigger bands dries up.
And that's where Nickelback are shining: they aren't the best post-grunge band out there by any measure, but people who like them are usually huge fans of the style. Without them and the many bands out there doing the same kind of thing, post-grunge would die out because they don't have the numbers necessary to keep the scene alive. Them being big...I guess they're just an example of a middle tier band who got big somehow. I don't really have an answer to that one...but, really, did you expect an answer? At the end of the day, Nickelback are big. They don't deserve their fame (if you want it in tier terms, they are a middle tier band who produce middle tier music, but are somehow in the upper tier), but I certainly think people calling for their heads (metaphorically: I don't think it's happened literally yet) are getting worked up for no reason. At the end of the day, Nickelback are just a band doing what they are doing. They haven't done anything that's dangerous to mankind as a whole and, from the little I've read about them, they are a bunch of nice guys who don't take themselves too seriously.
Plus, no matter how bad people claim their stuff is, they never descended to the level of releasing pure crap like Lulu or Dedicated to Chaos...
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Tuesday, 16 July 2013
Sampling: laziness from artists or something else?
Time for me to step outside my comfort zone! Yesterday (at the time I started writing this), I happened to hear Pitbull's recent single (you know, the one with the sample from "Take On Me" by A-Ha). This caused me and my sister to get into a debate about sampling in music and, to make a long story short, we pretty much agreed to disagree. To me, at least, sampling is a tool like Auto Tune: it has uses that are undeniable, but is frequently misused by lazy artists. In the Auto Tune example, I do not mind it when it is used for effect, as it can make your singing voice sound hollow and mechanical, which I think is a great use for it, but many use it to disguise poor singing, which I do not agree with. Let me give you a ridiculous example to illustrate my point: let's say Johnny Rotten wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". Would you let him sing it and Auto Tune him to make him sound like he can sing it or would you give it to someone who can sing it? I'm sure just about everyone would give it to someone else, which is my point. Back before the Beatles, songs were written and given to people who could sing them, which may seem odd in todays post-Beatles market, but trust me, it's like that a lot in folk music even now. While I will not say I want a return to the old days (after all, I'm a metalhead at heart, so that would mean giving up metal), I will say that pop has become dominated by singers who rely on Auto Tune, which, to me at least, is not right. At the risk of losing all of my credibility as a metalhead, this is why I respect Lady Gaga (key word being "respect": I would not say I am a fan of her music beyond a few of her songs): she doesn't rely on Auto Tune to cover up her singing, she uses it as a tool to enhance her music. So, now you know my stance on Auto Tune, when would I be ok with sampling?
Well, to start with, a sample, as a snippet of another song, will naturally earn comparisons to the song sampled, so I think a good sample is of a song that is old enough for it to be forgotten by a good number of people. That might seem like a strange comment to make, but hear me out: if you pick an obscure song, you're bringing exposure to an underrated (or justly forgotten, depending on your viewpoint) artist, which helps them out. If you pick an obscure song, you mutually help each other out, since it's unlikely people will know the original song, so they will go look it up and hopefully become fond of the original song while still appreciating the elements you added to the song (I'll go into more detail about that later). If, however, you pick a well known song (like Pitbull did), you're dooming yourself before you start, since it's rare that your sample will be seen with anything other than contempt by fans of the original and you'll be accused of laziness by a lot of people. Let me give you an example of a Pitbull song that I do not like, but appreciate the sample from: his song "Back In Time" features the guitar riff (and possibly the chorus: not sure whether Pitbull and someone else recorded it or it was a direct sample) from a song from 1956 called "Love Is Strange" by Mickey & Sylvia. As I'd never heard of the original song, I had no problems with the guitar riff being sampled, as it was a seriously cool riff that helped enhance the song (although the chorus really did not fit the song: again, I'll go into this in more detail later). With "Feel This Moment", I'm pretty sure everyone and their mother knows that song, so, to me at least, he was jumping on the success of the song and, in the process, produced a sample that did nothing to make his song better and pissed off fans of the A-Ha song like myself. So yeah, if you're going to sample a song, make sure it's not a well known (or, probably better, well respected) song, as you're going to receive a lot of flak no matter how good your song is. Obscure songs are ok, because you help give exposure to the other artist while minimising damage to yourself.
The next thing about a sample is that it has to fit the song. If you pardon me focusing on Pitbull again, the chorus of "Back In Time" was pretty much made up of the line "Oh baby, you're the one". Since this is meant to be a song about the Men In Black, the sample simply doesn't fit the song (unless you're really determined to make it fit, but I'm not a shipper here). If it had been just the guitar riff and had another sample for the chorus (maybe even the theme to the first Men In Black film), then I wouldn't have had a problem. As an example of a sample that does work, Flo Rida's song "I Cry" features a sample of "Piano In The Dark" by Brenda Russell. The chorus might be shifted into a much higher pitch compared to the original song and the whole song might be pretty much standard Flo Rida stuff (I honestly don't bother listening to Flo Rida that much: again, I'm a metalhead at heart), but it actually does fit the song (well, maybe not the "Gave up on the riddle" line, but, as it's a song about Flo Rida's life so far, I'm letting him off on that one). If you want a ridiculous example to highlight the point, you wouldn't sample "Back In Black" by AC/DC for a soft, mournful ballad song, you'd sample something like "Changes" by Black Sabbath (if you're daft enough to ignore my previous point, of course) or the obscure-even-to-Black Sabbath-fans song "She's Gone".
The last thing a good song with a sample needs is that the sample either needs to be the building block upon which the song is built or be used to make a point that the building block approach wouldn't succeed with. I can't think of any real bad examples of this off the top of my head, but I can think of a good way to do it: if you're writing a song about a broken romance, you can either sample a song about that or you can sample a love song and use the love song to make a point that things used to be different. Both would work well, but the latter, if done well, shows a hint of regret that the former wouldn't be able to manage so effectively. If you want to add something to the original song through your sample, you'll need to make sure you use the sample to build up your song, not get so caught up in everything else that the sample feels pointless. To return to my old point, if you're sampling "Changes" by Black Sabbath, you'll need to make sure you're talking about how your life has changed over time and how it's always going to happen if you're using it as a building block to make a point. If you're using it with the other approach, you could use it to say "I'm not changing who I am any more" and the sample is pretty much saying "Nope, you're still changing". If you will, you can use the sample as part of your own voice or as another voice against you. What you can't do is use the sample without thinking about it.
All told, I think sampling is like Auto Tune: it is a tool which can enhance the music if used well. However, many people don't use it well (or, at least, not as well as they could). At least in my viewpoint, the ways I've pointed out are the ways sampling should be used. It's not something you just do to give your song a chorus: it's a key part of the song and, if you don't think about it carefully, you're setting yourself up for a serious fall.
I encourage you guys to let me know whether they think I've made fair points on this topic or whether I'm so far off the mark that I'm actually invisible.
Well, to start with, a sample, as a snippet of another song, will naturally earn comparisons to the song sampled, so I think a good sample is of a song that is old enough for it to be forgotten by a good number of people. That might seem like a strange comment to make, but hear me out: if you pick an obscure song, you're bringing exposure to an underrated (or justly forgotten, depending on your viewpoint) artist, which helps them out. If you pick an obscure song, you mutually help each other out, since it's unlikely people will know the original song, so they will go look it up and hopefully become fond of the original song while still appreciating the elements you added to the song (I'll go into more detail about that later). If, however, you pick a well known song (like Pitbull did), you're dooming yourself before you start, since it's rare that your sample will be seen with anything other than contempt by fans of the original and you'll be accused of laziness by a lot of people. Let me give you an example of a Pitbull song that I do not like, but appreciate the sample from: his song "Back In Time" features the guitar riff (and possibly the chorus: not sure whether Pitbull and someone else recorded it or it was a direct sample) from a song from 1956 called "Love Is Strange" by Mickey & Sylvia. As I'd never heard of the original song, I had no problems with the guitar riff being sampled, as it was a seriously cool riff that helped enhance the song (although the chorus really did not fit the song: again, I'll go into this in more detail later). With "Feel This Moment", I'm pretty sure everyone and their mother knows that song, so, to me at least, he was jumping on the success of the song and, in the process, produced a sample that did nothing to make his song better and pissed off fans of the A-Ha song like myself. So yeah, if you're going to sample a song, make sure it's not a well known (or, probably better, well respected) song, as you're going to receive a lot of flak no matter how good your song is. Obscure songs are ok, because you help give exposure to the other artist while minimising damage to yourself.
The next thing about a sample is that it has to fit the song. If you pardon me focusing on Pitbull again, the chorus of "Back In Time" was pretty much made up of the line "Oh baby, you're the one". Since this is meant to be a song about the Men In Black, the sample simply doesn't fit the song (unless you're really determined to make it fit, but I'm not a shipper here). If it had been just the guitar riff and had another sample for the chorus (maybe even the theme to the first Men In Black film), then I wouldn't have had a problem. As an example of a sample that does work, Flo Rida's song "I Cry" features a sample of "Piano In The Dark" by Brenda Russell. The chorus might be shifted into a much higher pitch compared to the original song and the whole song might be pretty much standard Flo Rida stuff (I honestly don't bother listening to Flo Rida that much: again, I'm a metalhead at heart), but it actually does fit the song (well, maybe not the "Gave up on the riddle" line, but, as it's a song about Flo Rida's life so far, I'm letting him off on that one). If you want a ridiculous example to highlight the point, you wouldn't sample "Back In Black" by AC/DC for a soft, mournful ballad song, you'd sample something like "Changes" by Black Sabbath (if you're daft enough to ignore my previous point, of course) or the obscure-even-to-Black Sabbath-fans song "She's Gone".
The last thing a good song with a sample needs is that the sample either needs to be the building block upon which the song is built or be used to make a point that the building block approach wouldn't succeed with. I can't think of any real bad examples of this off the top of my head, but I can think of a good way to do it: if you're writing a song about a broken romance, you can either sample a song about that or you can sample a love song and use the love song to make a point that things used to be different. Both would work well, but the latter, if done well, shows a hint of regret that the former wouldn't be able to manage so effectively. If you want to add something to the original song through your sample, you'll need to make sure you use the sample to build up your song, not get so caught up in everything else that the sample feels pointless. To return to my old point, if you're sampling "Changes" by Black Sabbath, you'll need to make sure you're talking about how your life has changed over time and how it's always going to happen if you're using it as a building block to make a point. If you're using it with the other approach, you could use it to say "I'm not changing who I am any more" and the sample is pretty much saying "Nope, you're still changing". If you will, you can use the sample as part of your own voice or as another voice against you. What you can't do is use the sample without thinking about it.
All told, I think sampling is like Auto Tune: it is a tool which can enhance the music if used well. However, many people don't use it well (or, at least, not as well as they could). At least in my viewpoint, the ways I've pointed out are the ways sampling should be used. It's not something you just do to give your song a chorus: it's a key part of the song and, if you don't think about it carefully, you're setting yourself up for a serious fall.
I encourage you guys to let me know whether they think I've made fair points on this topic or whether I'm so far off the mark that I'm actually invisible.
Sunday, 7 July 2013
Iced Earth Alive In Ancient Kourion Review: Hear The Ghost Of Violence
I'll admit it: Iced Earth are not a band that I understand the hype behind. For me, they are a band made up of great musicians who simply don't write good enough songs to hold my attention. Now, to be fair to them, US power metal metal isn't my favourite metal subgenre of them all (that would be European power metal: US power metal probably comes fourth on the list, under thrash metal and glam metal), so I'm probably not the best person to review this DVD. However, seeing the DVD gain so much praise online left me wondering what it is I'm missing about them. So, I'm going to sit down and review it. Hopefully, all will become clear...
First of all, let's look at the setlist. Now, I've checked it a few times online and I know they played "End Of Innocence" twice due to sound issues, but the song doesn't appear at all on the DVD! There's a very noticeable jump from when the first performance of it originally was, as you'll see and hear Stu go "Alright" as if he's about to lead into it, only to suddenly move forward into a close up while he introduces "Dracula", which is odd, as the second transition is so seamless I didn't even notice it. This isn't acknowledged on any of the bonus features on the DVD, so I cannot help feeling a bit cheated that we aren't given a complete show. Maybe I'm being harsh, but the point of a live DVD is to show the band live, warts and all, not necessarily give the best show the band has ever given by trimming the songs that didn't work. At the very least acknowledge on the bonus features that there was a track which didn't go well! Otherwise, the setlist is not one I was especially familiar with: I recognised the songs from their most recent album, Dystopia, but, if you took away those songs, I would have only recognised nine songs from the whole setlist (for the curious, they were "Declaration Day" from The Glorious Burden, the three tracks from Framing Armageddon: Something Wicked, Part 1 ("Motivation Of Man", "Setian Massacre" and "Ten Thousand Strong"), "Watching Over Me" from Something Wicked This Way Comes, "Dante's Inferno" from Burnt Offerings and the three tracks from The Dark Saga ("I Died For You", "The Hunter" and "Slave To The Dark"): since I had barely listened to that album, I only recognised "I Died For You" on my first listen). Needless to say, I was hopelessly out of my depth in terms of recognisable material, as someone not familiar with the band's greatest works, although I was interested to spot the absence of any tracks (I'm not counting instrument interludes) from The Crucible Of Man: Something Wicked, Part 2. You can read into this what you will, but my guess is that the fans aren't the only ones who think the Owens years and Barlow's second return weren't that great...
In terms of the actual performances, I have to say that the band did a good job live. Jon Schaffer, as much as I dislike his tendencies to act like an asshole to ex-band members, does a great job on the guitar, playing all of the songs almost exactly like on the record and his lead vocals on "Stormrider" had me wondering why he isn't the lead singer of the band, as he did a better job on that song than a good few professional singers do on their own material. Probably can't do the high falsetto stuff the other songs demand, I guess. His backing vocals were also seriously good, but the thing that really impressed me, as a singer myself, is that he never let his vocals dominate the rest of the music: he just did his bit and then went back to playing the guitar. The bassist (considering he apparently had less than a week to learn the entire setlist before joining the band on tour: he replaced their earlier bassist in the middle of the tour) does a great job and his backing vocals made me think a bit of Tim Owens's clean singing. I know he has his own band, so saying he should do his own thing is pointless, but it's true: he should be leading his own band, doing lead vocals and playing bass at the same time. I have a feeling he would be great at it! The other guitarist doesn't stand out as much as Jon does, but, to be honest, that's not really a bad thing for him: Jon really does stand out so much on the guitars that I actually forgot there was a second guitarist at first! However, he does the solos like on the record and some of them (as any Iced Earth fan will be willing to tell you) are pretty difficult. The drummer (who left the band fairly recently, albeit on good terms) does a great job on all the tracks, but otherwise doesn't really do anything that crazy like a drum solo or something. While I'm not a huge fan of drum solos, I reckon this might have helped enhance the DVD a bit. The true hero of the DVD, however, is Stu Block. Holy fuck, this guy is awesome! He delivers the Ripper material (well, except for "Ten Thousand Strong", but I'll cover that later) and the Barlow material brilliantly, but he doesn't shy away from doing the Adams and Greely material with a conviction that I'm sure Barlow couldn't manage. His audience interaction is maybe more in line with what you'd expect from a metalcore band (he refers to the audience as "Brothers and sisters" quite frequently), but that's not necessarily a bad thing, since it does feel a bit more personal than just going "Hey, we're playing [song], hope you like it". Also, Jon does the same thing. Another cool thing he does is the "Heavy" "Metal" chanting he encourages the audience to do at one point: it looked like it was a lot of fun for the audience and I would have happily taken part in it had I been there.
The songs themselves will really depend on your thoughts on them on the album: if you didn't like them on the album, you ain't gonna like them here. There are a few minor exceptions to this rule, but the biggest one is regarding "Ten Thousand Strong". Put frankly, it's shit here. Instead of dropping it down to a more comfortable place in his voice like he did for "Satian Massacre", Stu tries to sing the entire song at Ripper's pitch, which basically makes the song painful to listen to. Granted, Tim struggled with this track live himself, but Barlow pretty much proved that he can't sing at Ripper's pitch through making the same mistake, so why is Stu doing it? While I do praise Stu for trying, a suggestion for the next tour would be to drop it down to a more natural pitch for your voice: it might sound wrong jumping so high up to a falsetto scream if you want to still do it, but trust me, it's better than giving a bad performance of the song again and again. Other than that, I liked the performances of all the songs I knew, found a few new favourites ("Pure Evil" stands out at the minute) and found a few tracks I'm probably not going to want to bother with in the future.
The picture quality is a little bit haphazard: it's very clear, but I found myself comparing it to Iron Maiden's Maiden England '88 DVD instead of En Vivo, as the quality felt closer to the re-release of Maiden England that 2012's En Vivo DVD. I don't know why, but the cameras don't seem to be of a particularly high quality overall, based on the picture quality. What you do see is really good, although I do think the band could maybe do with having some more energy on stage, since Bruce Dickinson on En Vivo has more energy than all of the performers except the drummer and Bruce is older than all of them (if my maths is right, by almost a decade compared to Schaffer, Iced Earth's older member).
In terms of how long the DVD runs, I have to bring up my biggest complain with Iced Earth: having to hear triplets for so long gets rather boring. There is a reason why Steve Harris doesn't make his bass so prominent in the mix that it overpowers everything else: hearing triplets constantly can become rather dull, as there isn't a lot of variation you can get when you're using triplets to form the bulk of your music. This is something that Jon Schaffer needs to learn (or, at least, mix things up a bit with), as I find my interest starts to wane at about "Wolf" because I start going "Can you mix it up a bit?" In their own right, the songs are good, but, with all the triplets in them, they start blending together into one after a while and I start to fall asleep. The concert goes on for about two hours and fifteen minutes, which is far too long for me! By the time "The Hunter" comes around, I'm actually relieved it's all over. For comparison, when Iron Maiden's En Vivo ends, my reaction is "OK, that was a good setlist and it ended at a good time." Maybe I'm nitpicking unfairly there, since it is part of their signature sound, but I think that it would be nice to have something different in the setlist to jolt those who are getting bored back awake.
In terms of extras, you get your basic behind-the-scenes section to cover what made them decide to film the DVD where they did, which was very interesting to watch, the band's thoughts on everywhere they'd played up to Kourion (which was the last show of the tour) and a photo gallery. While these were nice to watch, I think it would have been nice to get interviews with the band regarding their thoughts on the show. I also think the extras were maybe a bit thin overall, since you don't really get a lot of information out of them and I can't really see myself watching them again.
Overall, despite several issues, I can't say this is a bad DVD. Is it a perfect DVD? Not really. Is it a good DVD? Yes, it is. Maybe it would have been better with improved camera quality and some more extras, but I'd highly recommend this DVD to fans of Iced Earth. As a word of advice, if you do want to get this DVD and aren't familiar with Iced Earth fan, then make sure you sit yourself down with an hour worth of their music and listen to it all the way through before making your purchase. If you start feeling bored while doing this, then I suggest you either get this fairly cheap or skip it. If you don't like them...well, you'll not be getting this anyway, will you?
Overall rating: 8.5
A bit too long for it's own good, few extras and the quality of the cameras bring it down a bit, but, in the end, it's a great DVD for Iced Earth fans and a good place to check the band out if you haven't already.
(This is my first attempt at a DVD review, so any constructive feedback you guys have would be appreciated.)
First of all, let's look at the setlist. Now, I've checked it a few times online and I know they played "End Of Innocence" twice due to sound issues, but the song doesn't appear at all on the DVD! There's a very noticeable jump from when the first performance of it originally was, as you'll see and hear Stu go "Alright" as if he's about to lead into it, only to suddenly move forward into a close up while he introduces "Dracula", which is odd, as the second transition is so seamless I didn't even notice it. This isn't acknowledged on any of the bonus features on the DVD, so I cannot help feeling a bit cheated that we aren't given a complete show. Maybe I'm being harsh, but the point of a live DVD is to show the band live, warts and all, not necessarily give the best show the band has ever given by trimming the songs that didn't work. At the very least acknowledge on the bonus features that there was a track which didn't go well! Otherwise, the setlist is not one I was especially familiar with: I recognised the songs from their most recent album, Dystopia, but, if you took away those songs, I would have only recognised nine songs from the whole setlist (for the curious, they were "Declaration Day" from The Glorious Burden, the three tracks from Framing Armageddon: Something Wicked, Part 1 ("Motivation Of Man", "Setian Massacre" and "Ten Thousand Strong"), "Watching Over Me" from Something Wicked This Way Comes, "Dante's Inferno" from Burnt Offerings and the three tracks from The Dark Saga ("I Died For You", "The Hunter" and "Slave To The Dark"): since I had barely listened to that album, I only recognised "I Died For You" on my first listen). Needless to say, I was hopelessly out of my depth in terms of recognisable material, as someone not familiar with the band's greatest works, although I was interested to spot the absence of any tracks (I'm not counting instrument interludes) from The Crucible Of Man: Something Wicked, Part 2. You can read into this what you will, but my guess is that the fans aren't the only ones who think the Owens years and Barlow's second return weren't that great...
In terms of the actual performances, I have to say that the band did a good job live. Jon Schaffer, as much as I dislike his tendencies to act like an asshole to ex-band members, does a great job on the guitar, playing all of the songs almost exactly like on the record and his lead vocals on "Stormrider" had me wondering why he isn't the lead singer of the band, as he did a better job on that song than a good few professional singers do on their own material. Probably can't do the high falsetto stuff the other songs demand, I guess. His backing vocals were also seriously good, but the thing that really impressed me, as a singer myself, is that he never let his vocals dominate the rest of the music: he just did his bit and then went back to playing the guitar. The bassist (considering he apparently had less than a week to learn the entire setlist before joining the band on tour: he replaced their earlier bassist in the middle of the tour) does a great job and his backing vocals made me think a bit of Tim Owens's clean singing. I know he has his own band, so saying he should do his own thing is pointless, but it's true: he should be leading his own band, doing lead vocals and playing bass at the same time. I have a feeling he would be great at it! The other guitarist doesn't stand out as much as Jon does, but, to be honest, that's not really a bad thing for him: Jon really does stand out so much on the guitars that I actually forgot there was a second guitarist at first! However, he does the solos like on the record and some of them (as any Iced Earth fan will be willing to tell you) are pretty difficult. The drummer (who left the band fairly recently, albeit on good terms) does a great job on all the tracks, but otherwise doesn't really do anything that crazy like a drum solo or something. While I'm not a huge fan of drum solos, I reckon this might have helped enhance the DVD a bit. The true hero of the DVD, however, is Stu Block. Holy fuck, this guy is awesome! He delivers the Ripper material (well, except for "Ten Thousand Strong", but I'll cover that later) and the Barlow material brilliantly, but he doesn't shy away from doing the Adams and Greely material with a conviction that I'm sure Barlow couldn't manage. His audience interaction is maybe more in line with what you'd expect from a metalcore band (he refers to the audience as "Brothers and sisters" quite frequently), but that's not necessarily a bad thing, since it does feel a bit more personal than just going "Hey, we're playing [song], hope you like it". Also, Jon does the same thing. Another cool thing he does is the "Heavy" "Metal" chanting he encourages the audience to do at one point: it looked like it was a lot of fun for the audience and I would have happily taken part in it had I been there.
The songs themselves will really depend on your thoughts on them on the album: if you didn't like them on the album, you ain't gonna like them here. There are a few minor exceptions to this rule, but the biggest one is regarding "Ten Thousand Strong". Put frankly, it's shit here. Instead of dropping it down to a more comfortable place in his voice like he did for "Satian Massacre", Stu tries to sing the entire song at Ripper's pitch, which basically makes the song painful to listen to. Granted, Tim struggled with this track live himself, but Barlow pretty much proved that he can't sing at Ripper's pitch through making the same mistake, so why is Stu doing it? While I do praise Stu for trying, a suggestion for the next tour would be to drop it down to a more natural pitch for your voice: it might sound wrong jumping so high up to a falsetto scream if you want to still do it, but trust me, it's better than giving a bad performance of the song again and again. Other than that, I liked the performances of all the songs I knew, found a few new favourites ("Pure Evil" stands out at the minute) and found a few tracks I'm probably not going to want to bother with in the future.
The picture quality is a little bit haphazard: it's very clear, but I found myself comparing it to Iron Maiden's Maiden England '88 DVD instead of En Vivo, as the quality felt closer to the re-release of Maiden England that 2012's En Vivo DVD. I don't know why, but the cameras don't seem to be of a particularly high quality overall, based on the picture quality. What you do see is really good, although I do think the band could maybe do with having some more energy on stage, since Bruce Dickinson on En Vivo has more energy than all of the performers except the drummer and Bruce is older than all of them (if my maths is right, by almost a decade compared to Schaffer, Iced Earth's older member).
In terms of how long the DVD runs, I have to bring up my biggest complain with Iced Earth: having to hear triplets for so long gets rather boring. There is a reason why Steve Harris doesn't make his bass so prominent in the mix that it overpowers everything else: hearing triplets constantly can become rather dull, as there isn't a lot of variation you can get when you're using triplets to form the bulk of your music. This is something that Jon Schaffer needs to learn (or, at least, mix things up a bit with), as I find my interest starts to wane at about "Wolf" because I start going "Can you mix it up a bit?" In their own right, the songs are good, but, with all the triplets in them, they start blending together into one after a while and I start to fall asleep. The concert goes on for about two hours and fifteen minutes, which is far too long for me! By the time "The Hunter" comes around, I'm actually relieved it's all over. For comparison, when Iron Maiden's En Vivo ends, my reaction is "OK, that was a good setlist and it ended at a good time." Maybe I'm nitpicking unfairly there, since it is part of their signature sound, but I think that it would be nice to have something different in the setlist to jolt those who are getting bored back awake.
In terms of extras, you get your basic behind-the-scenes section to cover what made them decide to film the DVD where they did, which was very interesting to watch, the band's thoughts on everywhere they'd played up to Kourion (which was the last show of the tour) and a photo gallery. While these were nice to watch, I think it would have been nice to get interviews with the band regarding their thoughts on the show. I also think the extras were maybe a bit thin overall, since you don't really get a lot of information out of them and I can't really see myself watching them again.
Overall, despite several issues, I can't say this is a bad DVD. Is it a perfect DVD? Not really. Is it a good DVD? Yes, it is. Maybe it would have been better with improved camera quality and some more extras, but I'd highly recommend this DVD to fans of Iced Earth. As a word of advice, if you do want to get this DVD and aren't familiar with Iced Earth fan, then make sure you sit yourself down with an hour worth of their music and listen to it all the way through before making your purchase. If you start feeling bored while doing this, then I suggest you either get this fairly cheap or skip it. If you don't like them...well, you'll not be getting this anyway, will you?
Overall rating: 8.5
A bit too long for it's own good, few extras and the quality of the cameras bring it down a bit, but, in the end, it's a great DVD for Iced Earth fans and a good place to check the band out if you haven't already.
(This is my first attempt at a DVD review, so any constructive feedback you guys have would be appreciated.)
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