Iced Earth – Plagues of Babylon – 2014
If you look at the cover of Plagues of Babylon, or any Iced Earth album for that matter, you might get the impression that the music is very violent. That isn’t the case. It’s metal music of course but less death and more power metal. It’s a pretty nice album, not fantastic but well worth a listen if you’re into symphonic and melodic power metal. Plagues of Babylon is kind a of aggressive album. The band control themselves though and they keep it on the right side al the way through. They keep the control.
I think part of it might be an illusion since the singer Stu Block has “one of those voices”. He sounds masculine, though not growling. He has a deep voice that brings character to the music. I like his vocals a lot.
Yet Plagues of Babylon tends to get a bit boring after a while. It’s well preformed, it has nicely written song and all that but there’s something missing. There isn’t that nerve to it that it would need to climb up a notch in the rating. Still, I feel the urge to explore their catalog further and I look forward to forthcoming releases.
