Iced Earth: The Dark Saga (1996)
With their fourth studio LP, 1996’s The Dark Saga, underground metal stalwarts Iced Earth struck up a fruitful, mutually beneficial partnership with comic book creator Todd McFarlane and his wildly popular Spawn franchise.
The band’s guitarist and chief songwriter, Jon Schaffer, scored a stunning piece of cover art from McFarlane, and returned the favor in kind with a full-blown concept album inspired by one of his favorite comics antiheroes.
As for Iced Earth fans, they got the most polished and professional recordings of the group’s career thus far -- but there was a price to pay, since Schaffer’s increasing confidence as a songwriter found him easing off the thrash metal gas pedal like never before.
Indeed, Iced Earth patiently stomp through both the title track and rather dramatic “I Died for You,” before the furious “Violate” offers listeners their first taste of Mark Prator’s double kick drums, followed by just a few more bites via “The Last Laugh” and the excellent “Vengeance is Mine.”
That said, the leather-lunged Matthew Barlow is impressive throughout, and Schaffer’s six-string interplay with lead guitarist Randall Shawver is something else, particularly on the dual harmonies of “Depths of Hell” and career highlight “The Hunter.”
Finally, comes a three-song suite named “The Suffering” that, despite a muscular center (“Slave to the Dark”) between milquetoast surroundings (“Scarred” and “A Question of Heaven”) can’t hold a candle to Burnt Offerings’ epic finale, “Dante’s Inferno.”
Oh well, it may not be perfect, but The Dark Saga still makes a powerful statement and easily qualifies among Iced Earth’s strongest and most memorable albums -- with a little help from that tortured cartoon character, Mr. Spawn.
p.s. -- Some of these words were cannibalized from my All-Music Guide review of Iced Earth’s The Dark Saga.
More Iced Earth: Night of the Stormrider, Burnt Offerings, Days of Purgatory, Something Wicked This Way Comes.
