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.)
No comments:
Post a Comment