American heavy metal band ICED EARTH will release “Plagues of Babylon” in the USA on January 21, 2014. I really enjoy the guitar work on it by Jon Schaffer and Troy Seele – but to be point blank the vocals by Stu Block leave much more to be desired and are truly some of the weakest I’ve ever heard in recent times. But if you’re a fan of totally over the top, off-key singing then have at it!
It opens with a bang no doubt with the hard charging opening title track “Plagues of Babylon”, followed next by “Democide” and “The Culling” – but by this point I am already starting to lose interest in the material that sounds more cliche-filled with each moment. Big chorus with solid production, but it frankly comes off like a jingle for a vaginal douche product.
“Among The Living” dead starts out with great ambition but then farts into nothing more than what I heard on the first few cuts. Going over the top, much? Again, when your band starts to sound redundant, write some different sounding songs. It might actually help sell some records.
They even wrote a song called “Cthulhu” which I thought was cool because I was one of those hardcore fucking dudes that used to actually get down with the role playing game as a teenager but you know what? The song did nothing for me. Which sucks, because how do you blow a song on such a cool subject matter?
I wouldn’t need to be hard on this collection of songs if they didn’t come off as pointless, meandering and really just boring when it comes right down to it. Don’t get me wrong if they would just get a singer that actually has some vocal range then maybe they could get me excited about what they are doing. But in the end, the less than stellar vocals here just kill any chance of this album being great. Overall it falls well below average for me.
ROCKET REVIEW:
[starreview tpl=16]
ICED EARTH – “Plagues of Babylon” (CD)
(Century Media Records/2014)
1. Plagues of Babylon
2. Democide
3. The Culling
4. Among the Living Dead
5. Resistance
6. The End?
7. If I Could See You
8. Cthulhu
9. Peacemaker
10. Parasite
11. Spirit of the Times
12. Highwayman
13. Outro
http://www.icedearth.com/
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