Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Backstage Werk / Munich / Germany
Concert date: 07.12.2011
Attendance: 1200
Ticket price: €28.00 (presale) / €32.00 (day of show)
What happens when a band with cult status on the metal scene, after years of searching for its own identity, manages to pull off a total “re-juvenilization,” goes back to its roots, re-combs the magic of the most expressive stretch of its discography (the one that made them great) and comes back with a dream sequel to its story? Nothing to it. Simple! You’ve got to catch their new tour!
Iced Earth, probably the most revered American metallers in Europe today, and, as my colleague Rok Klemše vividly put it in one of his RockLine articles about Iced Earth, summing up their musical essence as “thrashed-up power metal,” have put out a new studio album this year, “Dystopia.” For the new record the band brought in the excellent Canadian singer from Into Eternity, Stu Block. Even the run-through of old songs and the testing of the new chemistry between Schaffer and Block, especially after the release of the single “Dante’s Inferno 2011”, hinted that “Dystopia” would once again be a convincingly old-school bent record. But that it would actually be a sequel to the album that closes Iced Earth’s golden era (I’m aiming at “Horror Show” from 2001)? Nobody would have dared to even think that. And that’s exactly what happened. Iced Earth and Stu Block pulled an unexpectedly winning poker hand of aces out of their sleeve, and in the glow of a new personal renaissance, really a fresh spring bloom, they not only released a great new studio album but also carried this fully functioning chemistry onto the concert stages. Of the new European tour.
RockLine didn’t think twice about grabbing the first chance to check out what Iced Earth are up to on stage this year. We caught the band in “brotherly” Belgrade (Serbia) on 23.11.2011 (concert report by Rok Klemše HERE!) and the feeling was downright phenomenal. Let me skip the litany of praise and go straight to the simple conclusion of the post-Belgrade concert experience: “I absolutely have to see Iced Earth once more!” I scan the tour dates and my eye stops on Munich. Smack in the middle of the week, in the bitterly cold middle of December, and yet worth every last bit of sacrifice. It was that symbolic anniversary of the assassinations of John Lennon and Dimebag Darrell, when five hardcore metal fanatics “stuffed” themselves into a Škoda Fabia wagon and shrugged off the consequences of the “blistering” cramped squeeze on the road to the Bavarian capital.
It’s almost eight in the evening. The Munich Backstage grounds are buzzing like rarely before. At half past eight, Britain’s Fury UK take the stage. A pretty uninteresting band. A trio grinding out the old-school template, the platform of the N.W.O.B.H.M. legacy. Predictable and tried-and-true. Delivered far more convincingly by older acts, and by Fury UK’s contemporaries, who serve this stuff better. Two things especially stab you in the ears with this band. One is the unbearably annoying timbre and delivery of the vocalist, who would fit better in punk, or at least in thrash metal. The other is the out-of-place drum solo, which does nothing but steal time and torment the cochlea. 40 minutes of serious torture were somehow behind us. Hallelujah.
White Wizzard are the polar opposite of Fury UK. They count as revivalists too, but they master their instruments incomparably better, and the same goes for a much better defined vocal that fits the metal atmosphere way more. Sadly, the band wasn’t on stage. They weren’t on stage in Belgrade either, but back then we didn’t know why. In the two-week gap between the two shows of this Iced Earth tour, we dug up the info that White Wizzard were forced to cut the tour short due to lack of funds. Unofficial rumors add the following. White Wizzard allegedly kept showing up late to the stage and generally behaved unprofessionally when it came to the agreements and rules of the current tour with Iced Earth, so the Iced Earth management, who call the shots on this tour, calmly gave them the boot. What that means for the band’s future career is something time will tell, as will whether the gesture sobered up the young rowdies or not.
Iced Earth took the stage about 15 minutes before ten. The stage in the Backstage hall greeted them with a long, lengthwise runway that let the band spread out to the max. The height of the hall also allowed the drums to be raised on an extra riser, and thanks to the proper ceiling height (good morning Cvetličarna in Ljubljana and the date 20.02.2009!) the hall is set up for an optimized spotlight rig.
The hall has a floor that, by eye, can squeeze in about 600 souls, with steps all around leading up to raised walkways along the left and right edges of the floor, and to a walkway behind it. There’s really a lot of room, even with a mass turnout of over 1000 people, which this Iced Earth show certainly didn’t escape.
The sound was flawless from the very first moment! The venomous riffing of the Schaffer/Seele guitar duo, the singular pulsing, explosive communication of the Smedley / Vidales rhythm fortress, with the tireless vocal runner Stu Block planted front and center. Everything was clearly audible and the contrasts were distributed “pyramidally” (in a “3-D” effect).
Of course, Stu Block drew the most interest. In Munich too, he confirmed that his arrival is the guarantee that Iced Earth can squeeze nothing but their very best out of themselves on stage today. The man hit seemingly unreachable vocal ranges with featherweight ease, along with the tonal contrasts that clearly separate the Iced Earth material with Tim “Ripper” Owens from the Mathew Barlow stuff. Yes. Stu Block can be a convincing “Ripper” and a convincing Barlow, all in one person and in one piece. In nearly two hours of show, he didn’t buckle for a second in carrying out his duties. On top of the demanding job his vocal role in Iced Earth carries, he crowned it all with extraordinary stage agility. In that sense, I dare say that to this day Stu Block is the best stage performer Iced Earth have ever had in the singer’s spot. With a dynamic, fully lived-in stage act full of gestures, solid eye contact with the crowd, plenty of walks to the left and right sides of the stage and firing up the band members, he’s simply a born frontman. Working a crowd is child’s play for him, and the audience ate out of the band’s hand with incredible appetite all night. At one point Stu stoked the packed hall to the extreme by bounding onto the stage waving the German tricolor, effectively knocking on the national feelings of the Germans too. Near the end, Stu used one of the breaks between songs to thank every single member of Iced Earth individually for making it possible for him to be part of Iced Earth! With this kind of work ethic and conviction, the charismatic Block has surely already won Schaffer’s heart!
The watchful hawk eye of the chieftain Jon Schaffer kept landing, mouth agape, on Stu Block’s fantastic interpretation. Jon Schaffer himself looked incredibly fired up on stage. With a scowling glare from under his brow, the kind we know from James Hetfield (Metallica), his lower lip pulled taut over a half-open mouth through which his teeth gently bared, Jon confirmed his extraordinary commitment and stage dedication! He enjoyed the view of a full hall as well as the realization of how well the stage chemistry of the renewed lineup was working. Iced Earth played as if in a trance. Troy Seele’s excellent soloing, he who had to work hard to earn Schaffer’s trust, confirmed that Schaffer has a terrific ally in this position too, one he neither knows how nor is able to leave in the lurch.
Iced Earth rarely move out of the strictly marked boundaries of the stage, set by agreement among the band members. With the exception of Block, of course. Seele only got permission to step to center stage at the intro to Declaration Day, and in the harmonic passage of the middle instrumental section Schaffer, Seele and Vidales, from left to right, lined up in the center together in that song alone. Otherwise, they strictly defended their assigned stage positions throughout the show.
The songs from the new album Dystopia work great alongside the band’s cult classics. It felt like listening to Judas Priest’s live album “Live Meltdown” from 1998, when Tim “Ripper” Owens brought fresh drive to Priest with his arrival. The “Dystopia” songs come across even better live than in the studio, a rare quality that only the best metal bands have. In the cult classics too, Block squeezed out his flexible maximum. In Watching Over Me, The Hunter or Burning Times he chased Barlow’s hard-to-catch pedigree of emotional immersion, then he shredded the eardrums of everyone in the hall when he breezed through the extreme-high-register lines of “Ripper’s” Declaration Day. His vocals sounded best on the numbers that demanded an extra dose of vocal chameleonism, such as the superior execution of the “Horror Show” classic Damien, while his aggressive guttural approach suits him just fine, as confirmed by the classics Stand Alone and the closing cannonade with the song Iced Earth.
The concert’s peak, though, was hiding somewhere else. In the encore, which Iced Earth opened with their epic suite Dante’s Inferno! A song that, by itself, always stirs strong emotions among the band’s faithful followers! Here too the band held the hall in a hypnosis with an excellent performance. The incredible crowd added their part, following certain sections of the song, with the zeal of the metal faith of defiance, as if in a trance. Simple as that. Anyone who didn’t get goosebumps from the hall’s thunderous, unified eruption alongside Block in both verses that open with the word “Lucifer!!!!” had no business being at Backstage this time. In a word: magic, the kind only the biggest metal events have, the kind you label without hesitation a “metal celebration.” And Iced Earth’s show in Munich this time carries that pedigree without mincing words. The performance of this song even coaxed some moshing out of the front rows of the hall.
After two hours it was all over way too soon. Iced Earth showed and proved that they are once again riding convincingly high on the wings of preaching their own musical vision. Stu Block is the cornerstone of this positive change, this transition into a new era, a new birth for a band that found a new creative drive and a new sense of defiance with him in the lineup. May this extraordinary motivation and renaissance of Iced Earth last forever! We can count on the band confirming festival slots for new European appearances in the summer of 2012. The tour promoting the album “Dystopia” has thus proven to be a complete Iced Earth triumph. After the concert experience with the band in Munich, it wasn’t hard to conclude that we had witnessed one of the best metal shows of this year. Next to the band’s unforgettable magic in Belgrade, of course!
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
1. Dystopia 2. Burning Times 3. Angel’s Holocaust 4. Slave To The Dark 5. V 6. Stand Alone 7. When the Night Falls 8. Damien 9. Dark City 10. The Hunter 11. Anthem 12. Declaration Day 13. Days Of Rage 14. Watching Over Me —encore I.— 15. Dante’s Inferno 16. Iced Earth
Photo gallery
