Florida five piece power mettlers Iced
Earth are a band I have been wanting to see on
the live circuit for a long time and tonight I
caught them at the Academy in Bristol, the show
was original scheduled for the Academy 2 but due
to selling more tickets than expected it was moved
to the main Academy the venue looked half empty
but there is no way all these people would of
fitted into the Academy 2, looking around the
crowd tonight was a mature audience and you just
knew there was going to be a lot of head banging
and hair being thrown about.
 Iced Earth took to the stage at 9.15pm and played
a ballsy 90minute set and started off on a high
with the title track from their latest album ‘Dystopia’
which features a mad instrumental introduction
which sounds like an epic battle charge and new
vocalist Stu Block broke his Bristol cherry with
a mad growl before unleashing his diverse range
of vocals throughout the 6minute epic ‘Dystopia’.
The 17 song set featured 7 songs from the bands
current album ‘Dystopia’ with new
front man Stu Block announcing mid set that they
are extremely proud of their new album and are
playing as many songs off it as possible, this
was met with loud cheers from the crowd who obviously
share the same positive thoughts on ‘Dystopia’.
The most touching moment of the set was just
before they played ‘End Of Innocence’
and Stu Block made an announcement about how he
wrote the song about his mum who is currently
suffering from cancer and how we live in such
a fucked up world where anything can happen, the
song went down a treat and you could feel the
emotion running through Block’s voice and
in his eyes, this was followed up by the awesome
‘Anthem’ which had Brock addressing
the crowd that we can’t be on a downer and
have to celebrate our life and the melodic lyrics
of “Torn asunder our destiny is in sight,
This is the anthem to celebrate your life”
got that message across clearly.
 Despite the set being made up mainly of new tracks
it did not stop Iced Earth from adding a few classics
into the set and Stu Block covered the vocals
with perfection and it was ‘Dante’s
Inferno’ which got the biggest reaction
tonight as the song is an 16minutes masterpiece
which has three sections put together to make
one epic song.
Throughout the 90minute set there was no giving
up by the head bangers in the pit they were going
for it for the whole set and even the people propping
up the bar and situated near the back of the venue
were getting into it with their best power metal
air guitar moves.
It’s fair to say that Iced Earth were fantastic
tonight, they came and gave the fans exactly what
they wanted and churned out an outstanding 17
track set with long term founding member Jon Schaffer
really upping the pace for speedy guitar riffs
tonight.
Iced Earth 4/5
Review By Trigger |
