Artist: Iced Earth
Label: Century Media
Release: 1999
Rating: 5/5
Nine years have gone by since this triple live CD from Florida thrash metal champions Iced Earth came out, and here I am typing these words on my PC. It’s one of those heavy metal documents that stay forever in the heart of every true music lover, not to mention every loyal heavy metal warrior on this planet.
So if we rewind ten years, we find Iced Earth at the peak of their powers. The tour for their freshly released album “Somethiing Wicked This Way Comes” (1998) brought the band to Thessaloniki, Greece, specifically the Rodon hall. Of course, not all these songs were played in a single night. Iced Earth played Thessaloniki two nights in a row, in front of a completely sold-out Rodon, which held over 5,000 fans in total. For each night Iced Earth put together a totally different setlist, so there were definitely plenty of Greek maniacs who wouldn’t dream of missing either night. The fifth studio album, which the band was promoting on this tour, signaled an even more noticeable shift toward adding melody to the basic thrash metal platform.
A band proves its quality most convincingly when a live album tops its studio achievements. Today that’s an increasingly rare thing, and the days when a live album crowned a band’s discography over a given period are long gone. “Alive In Athens” is a live album that shows a band thirsty and hungry to prove themselves, a band whose members’ hearts beat for the same thing, a band that knows exactly what it wants and that nothing can stop from reaching and realizing its goals.
After “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, Iced Earth never again came close to the aggression of the rebelliously uncompromising spirit they had from 1991 to 1999, radiating the freshness of witty, inventive musical expression across their first five albums. That’s why “Alive In Athens” holds the ideal mix of the best material the band ever recorded, spread over three discs, and we were lucky enough that this double back-to-back concert event happened in Thessaloniki, giving us this precious document. It’s an incredibly dynamic recording, thanks to the variety of songs following one another and the authentic energy it captures, or rather the magic, created jointly by the band’s wild fans and the band itself, with a unique sound that’s the pure essence of their stage presence. How much overdubbing and scrubbing of the raw recordings went on in the studio, we’ll never find out. All things considered, this is one of those albums that works perfectly, flawlessly, and that never gives you the feeling, despite all that perfection of captured authentic liveness and the right sonic shades of the production, that such an album simply couldn’t have been recorded live and released “first take,” with as few (or even no) studio touch-ups afterward. And that’s enough to keep the album at a level of exceptional conviction and ferocity from start to finish, with the captured energy charming the listener irreversibly.
The picture of Iced Earth’s live sound is perfectly clear, and as you listen to this show, the music conjures up a virtual vision and revival of that night all by itself, your brain convincingly painting a concert film before your eyes. Schaffer’s guitar (rhythm guitar) is pushed firmly to the right speaker, and his backing vocals audibly blend in from the right with Mathew Barlow’s centrally placed vocals. All of Larry Tarnowski’s solos come clearly from the left, and the harmonized triple-guitar weaves are clearly distinguished when you split them across the left and right speakers (a flattering reference for the beauty of this sonic distribution of the individual building blocks is “Live After Death,” the 1985 live album by Iron Maiden). The rhythm section, with the colorful work of witty transitional variety and masterful double bass pedal work from guest musician Brent Smedley, who’s as precise as a Swiss watch, is deep, and the sharply defined bass is sonically thick, warm and alive, with excellent doses of melody in the transitional parts that give the sound a distinctly three-dimensional quality. The crown on all of it is Matthew Barlow’s fantastic vocal, caught in moments of exceptional singing form. Barlow is incredibly convincing in every single passage, and every song literally comes to life in its message whenever the man opens his mouth. His voice sows convincing emotions of rage, agony, longing, sorrow and defiance. Barlow is one of those rare singers who’s allowed to do anything in metal and who pulls off every task with exceptional class. Whether he lets loose an ear-piercing scream, wraps his voice in a brutally raspy bark, or turns into a sentimentally subtle singer, giving the ballads Melancholy (Holy Martyr), the second half of A Question Of Heaven, Watching Over Me and I Died For You special weight, a clear musical vision and the band’s recognizable identity. The man can get seriously fiery and wicked in Violate, Pure Evil, Vengeance Is Mine, Braniwashed or Stand Alone. A special kind of anthemic quality, dark chill and agony is wonderfully captured in the mini-epics Blessed Are You, A Question Of Heaven, Dark Saga, Birth Of The Wicked, The Coming Course, Desert Rain, and, among them all, the especially venomously constructed Dante’s Inferno. These songs are the ideal blend of Florida’s palm-muted thrashing and the melodic, hymn-like parts inherited from Iron Maiden, proving Iced Earth’s remarkably sharp and witty approach to forging a recognizable, unique image of their understanding of heavy metal, for that time.
The discs are all equally strong, and you can’t really single out any highlights. “Alive In Athens” set a new milestone in the high quality standards of live album releases, one that only a few manage to surpass. After almost ten years it sounds incredibly fresh, unbelievably real, and its energy is utterly captivating from start to finish, shining with the original authenticity of heavy metal in the best possible way. How important this album is to the label Century Media is underlined by last year’s release of this concert recording on DVD, as well as the 2008 reissue of the album, which also adds the track Colors, a lost song from Rodon that was previously released on the EP “Melancholy (Holy Martyr)” in 1999. “Alive In Athens” is a document that has to grace the collection of every heavy metal fan, a document that even after almost ten years the tooth of time hasn’t gnawed at, and a document that’s downright ideal for anyone who doesn’t know the band and has no idea where to start discovering them. It really doesn’t get any more real than “Alive In Athens.” With it, Iced Earth created a work worthy of awe, an eternal evergreen that’s slowly but firmly earning the label of cult metal classic. Metalheads can truly feel blessed with “Alive In Athens,” or as band leader Jon Schaffer would put it: “Blessed Are You”!
Lineup
Matthew Barlow – vocals
Jon Schaffer – guitar, backing vocals
Larry Tarnovski – guitar
James MacDonough – bass guitar
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Rick Risberg – keyboards
Brent Smedley – drums
Production
Jon Schaffer & Jim Morris
Track list
CD 1.:
1. Burning Times
2. Vengeance Is Mine
3. Pure Evil
4. My Own Savior
5. Melancholy (Holy Martyr)
6. Dante’s Inferno
7. Hunter
8. Travel in Stygian
9. Slave to the Dark
10. Question of Heaven
CD 2.:
1. Dark Saga
2. Last Laugh
3. Last December
4. Watching Over Me
5. Angels Holocaust
6. Stormrider
7. Path I Choose
8. I Died for You
9. Prophecy
10. Birth of the Wicked
11. Coming Curse
12. Iced Earth
13. Colors *
*…released on the 2008 reissue
CD 3.:
1. Stand Alone
2. Cast in Stone
3. Desert Rain
4. Brainwashed
5. Disciples of the Lie
6. When the Night Falls
7. Diary
8. Blessed Are You
9. Violate
