### Iced Earth: Framing armageddon

#### 26/07/11 || revenant

Iced Earth fans may want to look away now. I’m about to give a long overdue ripping to a band who has, let’s face it, descended into a farce so deep it could well be the prequel to “This is Spinal Tap”. Yes, I am a fan of a number of their works (“Horror Show” in particular), but for some reason they’ve always been treated with kid gloves at this site and others. It’s time to stop the pampering. No more overly generous reviews of average work. It’s time to call a spade a spade. Iced Earth have fucken lost it and they fucken suck it big time. This is fact.

Just look at their recent history, the part I referred to in my introduction as the Spinal Tap prequel:

Item 1 for inspection: Matt Barlow quits Iced Earth to join the police force. I did a double take when I first read that. Apparently living the life of a rock star was an illusion, and he needed to contribute something to the “real world”. Oh man. At least he’s doing and not sitting back and telling us what to do with our lives like all those other hypocritical rock stars, so I guess some credit is due.

Item 2 for inspection: Matt Barlow’s replacement is so fucken good Hollywood already made a movie about him). Hahaha fucken Hollywood, they love their rags to riches stories, don’t they? Bit of a miscast on the Jennifer Aniston character though, who in real life looks like this.

Item 3 for inspection: In the ultimate in stupid pretentious ideas, Schaffer decides that doing an individual concept is no longer enough, but decides instead to create a trilogy of albums to tell a science fiction story he made up himself. What in the fuck is that? Even more ridiculous is that this is a re-telling of a trilogy of songs they already recorded. It’s complete fucking pretentious madness.

Item 4 for inspection: The first album completely sucks balls. On whose head does the blame fall? That’s right, Mr Hollywood movie himself. I guess that rules out any chance of Rockstar 2 coming to fruition. Who’d want to watch a movie about how a guy get’s kicked out of a middling metal band because their fans are a bunch of fucking whingers. “Look, look” they cried “Matt’s singing again, he’s clearly had enough of the real world and wants back into the illusion. Please please please Jon kick out Ripper and get him back”. Lord knows how Jon lured him back, clearly the world hasn’t been saved yet. Though methinks it might have something to do with Iced Earth moving from being just a band to a crime fighting group of superheroes, otherwise known as the “Denim Avengers”.

Ok, I’m writing a lot of shit here with zero fucken research behind it but it’s time to face the facts: Iced Earth, while once a force in metal, are now utter shit. And unlike some the less kind judgments from fans, I don’t for a second think it had anything to do with Mr Hollywood movie. Yeah, his screams do get fucking annoying, especially when you get layer upon layer of that crap, but that’s hardly the reason “Framing Armageddon” sucks the big one.

No, “Framing Armageddon” sucks it because of the dreadful songwriting. What is with all the dull chugging numbers and pointless interludes? There are 68 minutes of music on this disc, of which most of it should have been left on the cutting room floor. “Overture” is a pointless intro and could have been cut, “Something Wicked Part 1” was done better on the “Something Wicked This Way Comes” album, and “Invasion” is just silly sci-fi battle sound effects. That’s right, three tracks in and we’ve gone exactly nowhere. You’d get more progress from driving a car in neutral. “Motivation of Man” is next, I quite like this but it again goes nowhere and is over in an instant. “Setian Massacre” kicks in next, reasonably energetic but suffers from Ripper scream overkill. “A charge to keep” follows up with it’s wrist slitting dullness. Four minutes long but it feels like twenty.

I could go on and dissect this whole disc track by track, but I won’t. There’s 19 of the bastards I don’t have the patience for it. Instead I’ll tell you about the bits I like. Let me see… the second half of “The Clouding” is quite good, as is title track. “10,000 Strong” is another pretty good thrashy track that rips off Maiden with it’s dual melodic leads and is pretty good. Hmmm… I already mentioned “Motivation of Man” and “Setian Massacre”… shit, the list is looking thin. And that’s the main problem here. In 68 minutes of album time, there’s only about 20 minutes (at best) worth of workable material here, the rest is just dull garbage.

Perhaps I need to look outside the music to find positives on this one? Did you see the cover (top right hand corner)? Pretty nice, eh? Well the booklet accompanying this CD has similar fantastic artwork throughout and reads almost like a graphic novel. One credit I have to give Iced Earth is they’ve always made great booklets. Yeah, it’s a small thing, but those who still buy CDs and love a good booklet will love Iced Earth’s work.

The rapidity of fall of Iced Earth is a strange one. I, like ex-staffer GardensTale, found the previous album, “The Glorious Burden” to be quite a good disc with quite a few highs and the occasional low. But here that has flipped, and “Framing Armageddon” has quite a few highs and the occasional low. This album would rate as the worst Iced Earth album I’ve heard. From the amount of “wicked” extras Iced Earth are bringing out (Box of the Wicked, upcoming DVD’s, etc) one would think this was their crowning achievement of their career. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. This album is full of repetitive dull chugging numbers, and to bring out so many extra albums around this concept is blind arrogance.

So what next for Iced Earth? With a new singer recently announced one hopes a much needed breath of fresh air comes with him. The song writing needs to improve, and the band needs to get back to basics and stop parading around as though it were Iron Maiden. Unless that happens, don’t expect me to come back. Iced Earth, for all their great past work, produced a mammoth dud in “Framing Armageddon”, I see no more a fitting score than this…

- Information
- Released: 2007
- Label: SPV GMBH
- Website: www.icedearth.com
- Band
- Tim “Ripper” Owens: vocals
- Jon Schaffer: guitars, bass
- Brent Smedley: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Overture
- 02. Something Wicked, Part 1
- 03. Invasion
- 04. Motivation of Man
- 05. Setian Massacre
- 06. A Charge to Keep
- 07. Reflections
- 08. Ten Thousand Strong
- 09. Execution
- 10. Order of the Rose
- 11. Cataclysm
- 12. The Clouding
- 13. Infiltrate and Assimilate
- 14. Retribution Through the Ages
- 15. Something Wicked, Part 2
- 16. The Domino Decree
- 17. Framing Armageddon
- 18. When Stars Collide (Born Is He)
- 19. The Awakening