Metal Centre

If there is one metal band most deserving of accepting IRON MAIDEN’s crown it is ICED EARTH. ICED EARTH exudes the same type of larger-than-life persona as MAIDEN. Epic song structures, powerful choruses, soaring vocal highs, memorable guitar riffs and intriguing story lines reveal a special breed of band, and their fans recognize this. ICED EARTH has headlined metal’s greatest summer festival, Wacken, has earned gold records in Greece for selling over 500,000 copies of their “Alive in Athens” album, and tore through the Billboard charts with their last couple of albums.

ICED EARTH’s most recent development comes by way of their “Framing Armageddon: Something Wicked Part 2” album. This album is the second part of the “Something Wicked” saga, which first began as a three-part song on the “Something Wicked This Way Comes” album in 1998. “The Crucible of Man,” the story's first installment, featured former JUDAS PRIEST vocalist Tim “The Ripper” Owens, and showed the group utilize a more organic array of instruments and cinematic sound bites. The second portion revisits some of the same organic instrumentation such as cellos and bongos, but moves with a greater flow due to the group focusing more on traditional metal songs.

“Framing Armageddon” also signifies the return of long-time ICED EARTH vocalist Matthew Barlow. Barlow shows a spirit and connectivity to past ICED EARTH efforts (especially the “Something Wicked This Way Comes” recording) that wasn’t present with Owens, even though those albums were great in their own way. Band founder and lead guitarist, John Schaffer chatted via phone with Metal Centre on Barlow’s triumphant return, as well as filling us in on the new album.