### Iced Earth: Dystopia

#### 23/11/11 || Smalley

Obligatory recap of the soap opera that is recent Iced Earth: after golden era, golden-voiced frontman Matt Barlow left to serve his country after 9/11, brains-behind-the-scenes guitarist Jon Schaffer decided to pick Tim Owens as the new vocalist, who had previously sung in Priest after Halford temporarily left (funny how Owens has made a career of being the sloppy-seconds frontman once the guy the fans really want to hear leaves). Anyway, after releasing the solid (if unspectacular) “The glorious burden” & the overlong, uninspired “Framing armageddon”, Schaffer kicked Owens to the curb and gave Barlow one more shot on ’08’s “The crucible of man”, which might have been even more boring than “Framing…” was.

So, it’s less of a case of IE needing the right vocalist to make their sound work, since not even Barlow could help ‘em regain past glories, than a case of Schaffer needing to write non-boring material to make good music. Accordingly, I don’t care much about new vocalist Stu Block (of Into Eternity) making his Iced Earth debut here, especially since he just apes a lot of what his predecessors did, so let’s get to the songs already; we open up with the title track, starting with militaristic percussion and some unexpectedly good, epic riffing & lead work, which almost fools you into believing Iced Earth is back for REAL this time, before that hope deflates like a Macy’s balloon floating up into the Empire State Building’s spire, as a standard, neutered Schaffer gallop-riff takes over.

Okay, I get it dude, you can play that one riff like a spider on crack; now try something else for once, alright? As for Stu’s vocals, he goes back and forth between aping Barlow’s aggressive, melodic tone, and imitating Owens’ shrill, castrated shrieking, so he doesn’t make much of a difference here. The song overall isn’t bad, has a nice little solo (which doesn’t long enough), and is somewhat more interesting than most of the last 2 records, but it still isn’t good either; what I’m basically hearing here is a band content to simply write music on autopilot and steadily pump out something irrelevant every 2-3 years; maybe Schaffer The Egotist still thinks he’s making interesting music, and no one else is going to challenge him because he’s basically the band, but he could still use a nice, cold splash of reality on the groin.

Following metal ballad “Anthem” is a little better, with pretty clean-guitar, but still doesn’t come close to blowing me away, and after that, for the most part, “Dystopia” fails to pick up into becoming interesting. You have a decent aggressive/melodic/soft balance here, but almost none of it actually captures you. Again, the material here isn’t awful, but it still just comes and goes without leaving an impression. Drummer Brent Smedley does a lot of nice blast-beating here, but besides that, not much sticks out here.

It stinks; IE used to be consistently at the forefront of power metal during the old Barlow-era (and pretty much the only band in the genre I enjoyed), but they’re gradually becoming just another one of those generic, mid-level, faceless PM bands, hardly more important than Kamelot and the like. “Dystopia” is at least inoffensive, with a few cool moments, but mostly, it’s just a shapeless mass of gallop-riffs, double bass drumming, and generic gang vocal-choruses, constantly ripping off and pining for what worked in the past, but doing it much more half-assed. I mean, if this was just their debut, I’d be saying this isn’t a bad start at all, but coming from the band that used to give us stuff like The dark saga, I must demand more. Much more. Prety blah, generic, forget this, fuck it, nevermind.

- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: Century Media
- Website: www.icedearth.com
- Band
- Stu Block: vocals
- Jon Schaffer: guitars, backing vocals
- Brent Smedley: drums
- Troy Seele: lead guitars
- Freddie Vidales: bass

- Tracklist
- 01. Dystopia
- 02. Anthem
- 03. Boiling Point
- 04. Anguish Of Youth
- 05. V
- 06. Dark City
- 07. Equilibrium
- 08. Days Of Rage
- 09. End Of Innocence
- 10. Tragedy & Triumph