Artist: Iced Earth
Released: 1997 RATING: 4.5/5
The Good: I need to explain something briefly. Iced Earth is amazing, and the albums that came before and including 2000's Horror Show are particularly super. This review is less to say that a compilation album beats any of their actual LPs, but I feel that this release is very important. The main reason for this is the re-recorded versions of classic Iced Earth songs, such as "Desert Rain", "Travel in Stygian", and "When the Night Falls" with Matt Barlow (One of Metal's finest) on vocals, a big improvement over the promising, but vocally marred first few albums before Barlow joined. Plus, this compilation includes such masterpieces as "Dante's Inferno" and "Burnt Offerings" from the album that shares its name with the latter song. In my opinion, this album is the best place to start discovering Iced Earth's superior brand of thrashy Power Metal.
The Bad: It's a compilation album (from the middle of the band's career, in fact), so of course there isn't room for everything they did. As mentioned, feel free to fully explore every album up to and including Horror Show after listining to this compilation, especially the tracks with Barlow, as Iced Earth are at their best with him manning the mike.
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