...Well, the last one's been sorted thanks to my dad getting me a set of headphones as a somewhat late birthday present (cheers, dad!) and the second one is honestly not stuff that I really need to share (let's just say "offline issues" and leave it at that), but the first one is probably the one which is going to taint this review. See, I have a very odd relationship with the band: while I really enjoy a lot of their material as individual songs, I hate their albums (with the exception of 2011's Dystopia) as albums.
On paper, that's a really odd thing to say (surely that means I must love them if I like their material, right?), but it's about the best way I can put it: they have some absolutely amazing songs which are really worth a listen if you have any fondness for US power metal (and I would be more than happy to provide a list of songs by them to check out if anyone really wants a list of them), but I can't really recommend any of their albums because their material all blends together when you have to listen to too much of it in one go. Jon Schaffer (the band's rhythm guitarist, main songwriter and founder) is an undeniably great guitarist (at the very least, his guitar playing is rather distinctive and is arguably somewhat progressive due to the insane level of skill required to play like him properly), but his songwriting suffers from some VERY noticeable clichés which make it so easy to guess what the band's albums are that I'd be willing to go so far as to say that DragonForce are less predictable than Iced Earth are. Iced Earth can be summed up as Steve Harris' bass playing meets thrash metal, with a vocalist (you could apply this to any one of them) who has a lot of influence from Rob Halford (in terms of the large amount of high pitched screams that pop up in Iced Earth's material) and, in their later material, thinks he's in Queen (due to how many backing vocals pop up in the band's material...although you could probably attribute this to Schaffer working with Hansi Kusch (who I liken to being a one man choir), the frontman of Blind Guardian, in one of their side projects, Demons & Wizards), with the only change from that being when the band does ballads...which they do a surprisingly large amount of across their discography, once you get past Burnt Offerings. Even on Dystopia, which is the only Iced Earth album that I feel works really well as an album, you have three of them: "Anthem" (which is usually when I thank the makers of my CD player and/or iPod for the invention of the skip button), "Anguish of Youth" (which hits a bit closer to home for me than I care to admit) and "End Of Innocence" (which, again, hits a bit closer to home than I care to admit). When you sum up Iced Earth to me, I love them on principle...but, when I actually listen to them, they don't offer enough variety for me to keep my interest in them for the run time of a whole album.
So, surely that means I really dislike them if I can't enjoy any of their albums, right? Well...like I've said, I do actually like a lot of their material when it's mixed in with other material. Although I will admit that I think their two albums with Tim "Ripper" Owens (who should be familiar to people for his work with Judas Priest...and, for regular blog readers, you might remember my review of his solo album, which newer readers can find here) on vocals and their "reunion" (I use quotation marks because I consider The Crucible Of Man to be a Ripper-era album that Matt happened to be singing on...a bit like the upcoming Exodus album, actually!) album with Matt Barlow were only really useful as cures for insomnia, they did still have some enjoyable tracks on them and, when Iced Earth are at their best, they can produce some material that is absolutely brilliant: "Dante's Inferno", "Pure Evil", "Burning Times" and "Wolf" are among my personal favourite power metal songs and there's not one album by them which I can say is completely devoid of enjoyable material (although I will admit that The Glorious Burden comes VERY close to that for me). The big issue, as I've stressed in my last paragraph, is that they don't shake up their songwriting enough for me, as I start losing interest in their albums very quickly.
Which probably explains why I've needed over eight months before I could finally write this review: I've struggled to listen to the album enough to fairly review it!
So, with that bias fairly admitted, you guys probably know what to expect of this review already: the unimpressed rantings of someone who thinks an Iced Earth album is less than the sum of its parts. Are you right? Well, let's see, shall we?
I would go over Iced Earth's history, but, well, most people will no doubt have access to Wikipedia and will be able to open another tab to glance over their history before they continue this, so I'm not sure I really need to bother.
...OK, fine. Cliff notes version for the benefit of those with terrible internet connections: Iced Earth are a US power metal band which formed in 1985 under the name Purgatory, changed their name to Iced Earth in 1988, released their self-titled first album in 1990 (1991 in the US) and have since gone on to release eleven albums, of which Plagues Of Babylon is the most recent at the time of writing. The band's most iconic members of the band are rhythm guitarist, occasional vocalist, main songwriter and founder Jon Schaffer (who has a reputation for being a bit of a jerk due to the way he treats ex-members) and vocalist Matt Barlow, who was part of the band from 1994 to 2003 and from 2007 to 2011. The rest of the band's line up has been hectic to keep track of, but, at the time of writing, the band is made up of lead guitarist Troy Steele and bass guitarist Luke Appleton. While Jon Dette is the band's touring drummer at the minute (although he might be a full member of the band: I keep getting conflicting comments on that, depending on which sites I visit to check that information, but I'm fairly sure that I remember him being introduced as purely a touring drummer for the band, so, unless that's changed in recent times, that's what I'm referring to him as), on this album, the band's drummer was then-touring drummer Raphael Saini.
First up, the cover art. And I'm not going to lie, I think the cover art for this album is awesome! I was a Warhammer 40,000 player in my teenage years (I was pretty terrible at it, but hey, I was mostly interested in the lore!) and this hits that sort of dark feel that I'd expect from the setting, as unintentional as the comparison probably is. I could actually imagine that Nurgle (the chaos god of plague, despair, disease and death, for the benefit of the curious) has something to do with the plague invoked here...but yeah, moving on, the dark, somewhat unsettling effect of the artwork just hits my personal love of classic horror fiction very nicely (heck, most of my reading material these days is gothic novels and H P Lovecraft!). The specifics of the artwork are also very nice, although I do have to comment that the overabundance of grey on the artwork does mean that I would be VERY reluctant to want to get this on vinyl for the artwork: it's perfectly fine as a CD cover, but, as a vinyl artwork, it's a bit too heavy on the one colour to work for me.
After we get past the artwork, we arrive with the album itself. However, I feel I need to have a second mini rant before I move on to the actual album review. See, the first six songs on this album (the first side of it, for vinyl readers) are all part of the Something Wicked storyline. Now, I'm aware that I'm going to be in a minority of people saying this, but I think that the big problem that Iced Earth have suffered from since after the release of The Glorious Burden is that they (or, rather, Jon Schaffer) have gotten a bit too engrossed with the Something Wicked storyline. For the benefit of those not familiar with Iced Earth and who think I'm talking complete gibberish, Iced Earth have always had strong conceptual themes, if not having a storyline, for most of their albums, which has resulted in some very interesting albums (Night Of The Stormrider and The Dark Saga spring to mind at the minute on the good side and The Glorious Burden springs to mind on the bad side). The Something Wicked storyline is something that actually sprung from their fifth album, 1998's Something Wicked This Way Comes, and was the final three tracks on the album ("Prophecy", "Birth Of The Wicked" and "The Coming Curse"). While the storyline was not touched upon further for their next two albums (Horror Show and The Glorious Burden), the band's two albums after that (Framing Armageddon and The Crucible Of Man) were a two part concept album further covering the Something Wicked storyline.
And, as my earlier discussion might have given away, I didn't find them especially interesting. They suffered from what another review that I have read referred to as Nightfall In Middle-Earth syndrome (which I disagree with as a descriptive term due to the fact that Nightfall In Middle-Earth was hardly the first album to do what the reviewer was using it as an example for (Operation: Mindcrime did the same kind of thing, albeit to an admittedly smaller level than Blind Guardian did), but the basic idea behind the term is fairly accurate): far too many smaller tracks which served to be more like miniature radio pieces than actual pieces of music which were worth having on the album. Throw in the fact that, unlike Nightfall In Middle-Earth (which was made up with mostly excellent tracks), most of the songs on the two albums in the Something Wicked saga were dull and you can see why I do not enjoy those albums very much. Dystopia had two songs which were part of the Something Wicked saga (the title track and the closing track, "Tragedy and Triumph"), but they were rather subtle about it: for the first time since possibly Burnt Offerings, Iced Earth had an album which was simply a collection of songs, not parts of a story or tied together by a concept (although you could certainly trace dystopian themes in most of the songs on the album). And I think that really worked for the band: for the first time in a long time (Burnt Offerings came out in 1995 while Dystopia came out in 2011...you guys probably don't need me to tell you how long that is!), the band weren't trying to force songs to conform to some deeper meaning or to a story, they were merely writing good songs. While I took a LONG time to really click with Dystopia, it has since become the Iced Earth album by which I measure every other Iced Earth album up against, as it has the least number of tracks which I skip on any Iced Earth album (the tracks in question being "Anthem", "Equilibrium" (and I don't even dislike that one: I just don't find that one especially memorable) and "Tragedy And Triumph").
So a noticeable focus on the Something Wicked storyline on the first half of this album set off warning bells for me from the moment that bit of information was revealed. I had bad memories from the two part concept album being really dull, so I was naturally concerned that the return of the Something Wicked saga was a sign that Schaffer didn't know how to write without the storyline any more. The ONLY thing that had me somewhat reassured that that wasn't the case was the fact that one song was named "Cthulhu".
...If you're not sure why that was reassuring, go brush up on your knowledge of H P Lovecraft very quickly. Trust me, you'll need that knowledge for a bit later on this review, so don't say I didn't warn you if you come to it later and find yourself completely lost!
Anyway, I feel that, by this point, Schaffer has pushed the Something Wicked saga far enough through the band's albums. I would actually welcome him writing about a different concept for once, or even working with a comic company to bring the Something Wicked saga to life through the comic book medium (since it's pretty obvious that he has a lot of interest in comic books just looking at the fact that the band's album The Dark Saga was about Spawn), as I think that continually pushing the storyline further and further through the band's albums is not really necessary any more. An album made up of songs that are all stand alone would actually be something I would welcome from the band, maybe done while Schaffer works on actually getting the Something Wicked comic series off the ground.
...Well, now that rant is out my system, let's start with the actual review!
I can't really do this review without discussing the tracks that make up the Something Wicked storyline on this album, so I'll try my best to cover what I THINK is the storyline that is being told in the six tracks: a plague is unleashed upon the world which turns those infected by it into mindless creatures out for blood.
So, think most modern zombie fiction and you're pretty much on the right track.
While this is a storyline that a lot of people will say has been overdone in recent years (and it has), my big question is how this kind of story has any place in a storyline that, up until now, had involved the destruction of an alien race and the birth of a messiah fated to judge the fate of humanity. Even assuming that the Setians (the aforementioned aliens) unleashed the plague upon humanity (which is, admittedly, a not impossible leap of logic), it feels very much out of place compared to the rest of the storyline, especially considering that among the first lyrics of "Among The Living Dead" are "[t]his creation out of control", which would imply that, if the Setians HAD sent the plague, they'd intended it to control humanity and they'd messed up. Seriously, this is somewhat like what would happen if The Passion Of Christ suddenly turned into World War Z!
But hey, maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. After all, Jon Schaffer is a fan of comics, so maybe this is like a spin off mini series that's just being done in music form.
Well...I hate to break it to you, but that's not how spin off series in comics work. I'm not much of a comic book reader, but I have it on the authority of a relatively well known online comic book critic that what I'm about to say, in most cases, is fairly accurate.
See, comic book mini series and spin off series are still part of the main universe that spawned them. Red Lanterns, Green Lantern: New Guardians, Green Lantern Corps, Sinestro, Larfleeze and Green Lantern, while technically six different stories being told (...well, ok, it's five now, as Larfleeze has been discontinued), are still part of the Green Lantern universe, and you can easily tell this through the use of characters that are iconic to the Green Lantern universe, the use of familiar locations to those already familiar with the Green Lantern universe and the use of the typical Green Lantern mythos stuff, like the Green Lantern ring and whatnot. While the tones of each series can be very different from each other, there is still a grounding in the universe that they have spun off from and it's fairly easy to spot it.
Some mini series and spin off series can actually be made purely to continue a story from the main universe's stories, such as Rise Of Arsenal in connection to Cry For Justice. In that case, it was examining Roy Harper (probably better known as Red Arrow, the sidekick of Green Arrow) coping with the loss of his arm and the death of his daughter, Lian. While Rise Of Arsenal is by no means a good example of a mini series series and Cry For Justice has gained a reputation for being one of the worst things that DC comics has ever published, you can still trace a connection back to that mini series and the impact it had on the whole DC universe. While some mini series and spin off series have been made which tell stories that happened at the same time as another series, there is still always going to be a noticeable link to the original series.
In this case, however, there is no noticeable connection to the original Something Wicked storyline. I have looked over the lyrics to EVERY song that is connected to the Something Wicked storyline, looked as deeply as I can to try to find links, and I honestly cannot find any that would have me convinced that this story is even connected on any level to the Something Wicked storyline. This is a criticism that can be raised of the two tracks on Dystopia that are connected to the Something Wicked storyline, but those were just two songs that didn't really tell any sort of story: one could make a case that, were the series made into a comic book, they would be more like extra background reading than an actual mini series.
That is not the case this time, though: this is a fully planned out addition to the Something Wicked storyline. And, as I think I have made very clear, it has no connection (that I can spot) in tone, in spirit or even in universe to the original Something Wicked storyline. The whole thing feels like it's a completely different story that has been forced into the Something Wicked storyline just for the sake of continuing it past when it really should have stopped being told. While I will give credit to Schaffer for creating a very interesting storyline that would make for a very interesting comic book, he has clearly gotten so engrossed in the storyline that he created that he's forgotten that the storyline has actually already ended and that continually forcing new stuff into the storyline is only going to create a huge mess that is incomprehensible to even the most dedicated of analysts.
And yes, I know some people will be about to say "But [x] series has no noticeably connection to [y] series and it's still canon in that universe" and, if such is the case and you can prove that you are right, I will defer to you on that one. However, as a general rule of thumb, a spin off series needs to have SOME connection to the series it spun off from, even if it's down to just being set in the same town as the main universe or one character from the main series makes an appearance in it, and that is completely lacking here. It is very rare that a spin off series has no connection in the slightest to the original universe that it spun off from.
...Wow, that was a digression and a half, wasn't it? Let's get back to the album!
The other thing about the material (before we go into the actual ins and outs of it) that also ticks me off is probably a minor thing, but they do point towards the likeliness that Schaffer wanted the focus to be on the first six tracks rather than the other material: the last two tracks (technically three, as there's a hidden track, but it's apparently just a member of the band quoting a routine by a comedian who I know nothing about, so I'm not counting it) are not original tracks for the album. Track 11 is a song from Jon Schaffer's other side project, Sons Of Liberty. Now, I'm not hugely familiar with Sons Of Liberty, so I can't say with any certainty how good that album is, but the VERY politically charged nature of the project reminds me a bit too much of what Iced Earth did with The Glorious Burden, so the decision to bring politics into Iced Earth's music, as an English person who is listening to an American band and who is not especially interested in politics in general, had already lost me on that track even before I heard it. Protip for aspiring musicians out there reading this: your country's politics aren't going to mean much to people of other countries, so ranting about how crappy your government is won't endear you to international listeners UNLESS you can be subtle about it. Track 12 is a cover of The Highwaymen's song "Highwayman", which, I have to be honest, I do actually rather like, for all my ragging on it on the principle of it being a cover on an album by a band not normally known for including covers on their albums (outside of bonus tracks). It's not really that different from the original song beyond the decision to do it like a metal song, but I do have a soft spot for the cover and would not hesitate to call it one of my favourite tracks on the album...which doesn't say a lot good about the rest of the material when I'm saying a cover is one of the best songs on the album, does it?
That's where I have to start taking out the scalpel and cutting to the heart of the matter: while the album is a bit of a grower (I found it REALLY unimpressive when I got it, but it's become somewhat respectable in the time since then), it's still not got a lot of material that I'd say really steps above being merely OK. While I will admit that I do love "Among The Living Dead" and "Cthulhu", most of the rest of the material seems to suffer from at least one of two problems: an intro that goes on for so long that I've gotten bored waiting for the actual song to start (the title track and "Democide" spring to mind immediately here, and even "Cthulhu" only avoids falling into this territory for me due to a ridiculously high falsetto scream from Stu that never fails to leave my jaw on the floor in shock) or simply lacking something to really kick it to the point where I really want to listen to it again. Even the now-obligatory ballad on the album, "If I Could See You Now", feels really dull and doesn't propel itself beyond being a wonderful time to use the skip button. While I do have to say that the song has a message behind it that will hit fairly close to home for anyone who has lost a loved one, it's ultimately just a rewrite of "I Died For You", with a bit of "Watching Over Me" thrown in for good measure...and it isn't as good as either song. The material, as with on Dystopia, does take a bit more of a lean towards Iced Earth's earlier thrash days, which should make the album a bit more appealing towards fans of the band's early material, but, unlike Dystopia, which practically went full out thrash at points ("Boiling Point", anyone?), the thrash influence here feels somewhat diluted, as if the band didn't feel up to doing it properly and so half assed it. The only song where the thrash influence sounds like it's been done properly is on "Among The Living Dead", and even that doesn't sound as convincing as it should have been.
I also have to bring up the guest appearances on this album. I'm not an expert on drums, so I'm hardly the best person to judge this, but I don't hear any real difference between Raphael Saini's drumming and that of Brent Smedley (who is technically the longest lasting drummer in Iced Earth and the third longest lasting member of the band after Jon Schaffer and Matt Barlow, having managed a total of about nine years in the band over three different tenures...yet his drumming has only been on three of their studio albums, Framing Armageddon, The Crucible Of Man and Dystopia. It's kind of worrying when you can claim to be the third longest lasting member of a band, yet still only appear on an actual studio recording with that band ELEVEN YEARS after you first joined the band...). The other guest appearances should, on paper, attract the attention of metal fans: you get Hansi Kusch making appearances on several tracks (mostly restricted to backing vocals, although he does do a few lead vocals on "Among The Living Dead") and, on the band's cover of "Highwayman", you get a verse that is sung by Russell Allen (from the progressive power metal band Symphony X) and Michael Poulsen (from Volbeat, who I've taken to referring to as being a "metal n roll" band just for the sake of ease of description). In practice, though, Hansi's appearances don't amount to much (even on "Among The Living Dead", it's possible to completely miss him), so Blind Guardian and Demons & Wizards fans will be disappointed by how wasted he is on the album. Allen and Poulsen's appearances are nothing special either, but, on the other hand, both of them are a welcome addition to the track and are impossible to miss, so I can't exactly complain too much about them not offering much...although I think it would have made more sense to have had Poulsen singing the first verse due to the style of music he is known for better matching up with that verse than the last one, but that's probably just me.
There is one final gripe I really have to bring up before I move on to the production. Now, this one is going to be REALLY minor for a lot of people, but, as a huge fan of H P Lovecraft's writings, this is quite annoying for me: in "Cthulhu", the famous creature is referred to as "the Cthulhu" twice in the song. It's probably an honest mistake, but it's a VERY serious one for me, as Cthulhu is NOT the name of the creature's race: that's his actual name (or as close to it as human vocal cords will allow us to pronounce it). It would have taken a few minutes to check and correct, since Lovecraft's works are now technically in the public domain, so the fact that an error like this one has shown up at all just reeks of laziness and a lack of care for the subject matter. Protip for ANYONE wanting to write something based on the Cthulhu mythos: make sure you get the details completely right, as people who are more easy to anger than myself might well be calling for your head for making a mistake like that one!
The production...well, the mastering is somewhat OK (probably a bit on the loud side, but it actually sounds quieter than Dystopia does...trust me, I've checked!), but the mixing has relegated the bass to near inaudibility. I've made it obvious in just about every review that I've ever written that I hate this trend in modern metal music, so I'm hardly surprised by this point, but here's the thing that makes this particularly aggravating: my new headphones are fairly good at making the bass audible in most albums that I've listened to, yet I still could barely hear the bass on this album beyond a few scattered places. Yep: the bass is so quiet on this album that even the efforts of headphones which are pretty much designed to make the bass audible didn't do it. Poor Luke Appleton...
So, overall, what are my thoughts on this album? Well, the best way to put it is that it's serviceable: it's strong enough to be worthy of listening to, but you're highly unlikely to come away from it with any real highlights. As a follow up to Dystopia, it's unfortunately a pretty serious let down, even after eight months of letting it grow on me. I've tried writing this review multiple times over the last eight months, hoping that the album would not be the one which I would have to say these words about, but, unfortunately, it is, and there is no polite way of putting this: Plagues Of Babylon, at the time of writing, is my pick for the worst power metal album of 2014. I could still be proven wrong by Sanctuary's upcoming album (and a pre-release review that I've seen for it does have me concerned about it, I'll admit), but this whole album just reeks of a band rushing out an album in an attempt to stay recognisable rather than putting out an album that they felt deserved to be released. While Plagues Of Babylon is hardly a terrible album, it's not an especially good one either, so, unless you're a die hard Iced Earth fan, you might want to pass this one by.
While I will admit that my final rating is definitely on the harsh side (it's honestly closer to a 6 than the rating I've opted to give it, as none of the songs I dislike strike me as being outright bad, they're just unimpressive), I simply feel that, by comparison to the brilliance of Dystopia, this is so far below what I would have expected to hear that I simply cannot be merciful with this album, so to give any lenience to this album would be a great disservice to those other power metal bands who have put out far better albums this year than this one. The band are going to start writing their next album very soon, from what I've heard...I only hope their next one is better than this one!
Final Rating: 4 Out Of 10
Personal Favourite Tracks: "Among The Living Dead", "Cthulhu", "Highwayman"
(With HUGE thanks to Louis Lovhaug (also known as Linkara from Atop The Fourth Wall) for confirming the accuracy of the comic book details which I used in this review!)
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