ICED EARTH — The Glorious Burden (review)

ICED EARTH — The Glorious Burden album cover

Album · 2004 · US Power Metal

4.5/5 · 2011-02-15
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The Glorious Burden is the eighth full-length album by US Power/Thrash Metal band Iced Earth. It is the first of two albums to feature the vocal talents of Tim “Ripper” Owens who replaced the band’s long-time vocalist Matt Barlow after Barlow stepped down to pursue a career in law enforcement. The Glorious Burden is a concept album but unlike Iced Earth’s other concept releases the lyrical theme is atypical in that the songs are about military history. There are three versions of the album in existence, an American version, a European version and a limited edition 2CD that includes all the material from the other two versions plus an unplugged version of When the Eagle Cries. This review will focus on this version in order to give the best overview of all the versions, while referencing what versions are missing which tracks where appropriate.

The album opens with a cover of the USA’s national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner (unless you’re listening to the European version), which will lead straight into Declaration Day. I guess what is most of note from the off is the difference in Owens’ vocal delivery to Matt Barlow’s. Jon Schaffer certainly didn’t choose a Barlow clone to take over from him. Tim delivers vocally stuff that I find very difficult to hear Barlow doing and if I can, I can’t imagine it actually being better than what Tim delivers on The Glorious Burden. Even though I prefer Matt overall in Iced Earth, and would consider him to be the voice of Iced Earth, I’m actually glad that Tim Owens is the vocalist on here, his district style really makes some of the songs like Declaration Day really great.

Overall The Glorious Burden is one of Iced Earth strongest releases, despite often being considered one of the worst by fans (possibly those who think the band shouldn’t exist without Matt Barlow). Here every song is at least a solid piece of writing, and there are some true gems from their entire career, including the ballad When the Eagle Cries, which pays tribute to the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre. The standard version of this song is a mix of acoustics and heavier chorus. The 2CD version of the album includes the fully unplugged version, which I actually think is the better one of the two and personally think that this is the version that should have been included as a part of the main album.

Straight away after this the album dishes up gem after gem, with the excellent tracks The Reckoning (Don’t Trend on Me), Greenface, and Attila. Greenface is one of my favourites from the album. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear on the European version. The European version gets Waterloo instead, which to me is a good song, just not one of the gems. They are both, of course, included on the 2CD edition, as is the epic Red Baron/Blue Max, which is the only track on the album which features the writing of Tim Owens, who provided the lyrics. This is just one of those songs that makes me what to hit repeat after it’s finished. Valley Forge is another gem, while Hollow Man sits alongside Waterloo as a good, but non-essential track.

The band saves the real epic stuff for last though, with the three part Gettysburg (1863) trilogy. Three tracks, but effectively one song which lasts for a little under thirty-two minutes, making it Jon Schaffer’s longest and most epic composition to date and it’s almost twice the length of their previous epic, Dante’s Inferno from the Burnt Offerings album, with the first and third parts being over twelve minutes apiece. Musically there is much in this set of songs, which each cover a different day of the Gettysburg battle, which can be considered as symphonic power metal. The first part, The Devil to Pay, also includes interpretations of The Star Spangled Banner (again), and popular American songs When Johnny Comes Marching Home and Dixie. The three parts shift into each other with barely a pause which really adds to the effect the music has on me, and Tim Owens really delivers with his vocals, especially in the epic closing moments of the third part High Water Mark, where he really manages to make his vocals sound so tortured that it adds atmosphere to the story that Schaffer is retelling through his music. This trilogy alone makes The Glorious Burden essentially listening; in a way it is only an added bonus that most of the shorter songs are such gems.

Overall though we have a problem, and that is that while this is an extremely good album worthy of an almost perfect score, it doesn’t altogether sound like something I would expect to find in the Iced Earth catalogue. Some Iced Earth trademarks are there but overall this album is something of an oddball in their catalogue – partly because as I stated earlier, Owens delivers vocals very different to Barlow, or any of Barlow’s predecessors come to that. But it’s also because as a whole even Schaffer took things differently for this album, both lyrically with the theme and musically by reaching stretching the sound to its most epic. And that’s why I like The Glorious Burden so much, it’s not a repeat of what they did before and it sounds really fresh when put up against the previous couple of albums that they did before parting ways with Barlow. But that’s also the problem in itself, those prior albums were far from bad as well, and I’d even rate one of them, 2001’s Horror Show, as a superior album, and because this comes across as so different and can see why it may not be met with as much praise as I feel inclined to give it. But for me, this is a very special album indeed, and I cannot stress enough that it really needs to be given a chance.

(Review originally written for Heavy Metal Haven, scored at 9.3/10)