Horror Show - Iced Earth

 

Provenance: Another £1 bargain from the internal message board at a former job. I didn't really know a huge amount about Iced Earth at the time, but the chance to acquire some metal in exchange for a very small sum of metal proved irresistible.

I feel like Iced Earth are a band I've seen at some festival or another in a mid-to-late afternoon slot but my brain has been pounded into slurry by pandemic lockdowns, so who knows? I'm beginning to doubt I ever enjoyed seeing live music, once upon a time.

Review: So here we have it, Horror Show, each track taking its cue from a scary movie or historical personage, with the exception of 'Ghost of Freedom', which comes from the head of lead squealer Matt Barlow, plus a cover of the Iron Maiden instrumental 'Transylvania'. Iced Earth's main man and sole constant, guitarist Jon Schaffer, is responsible for writing virtually all the music and most of the lyrics throughout. 

I have a soft spot for anyone who indulges in these kind of monster-based shenanigans, ranging from Bobby 'Boris' Pickett through to Lordi and Ghost, so we're off to a good start. It's not always successful - observe Judas Priest's paean to Loch Ness and its resident cryptid features lyrics that straddle the Spinal Tap 'fine line between stupid and clever' divide (but also, crucially, an indestructible guitar riff). However, when it comes off, it's cool as fuck - the aforementioned Priest with 'The Ripper', Blue Oyster Cult cranking out 'Godzilla' and 'Nosferatu' on the same goddamn album, a whole bunch of Rob Zombie stuff - hell, I'll even allow Alice Cooper's 'Feed My Frankenstein', Elvira cameo 'n' all. The Venn diagram between fans of scary movies and heavy metal must be pretty chunky, so it's a good bet.

Thus, we've got musical tributes here to the Wolf Man, The Omen movies, Jack the Ripper (fertile ground, evidently), the Mummy, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein, Count Dracula and The Phantom of the Opera. This should be a lot of fun!

And, yeah, it is. The music itself isn't much more than rather decent power metal, though I found the mostly acoustic balladry of 'Ghost of Freedom' quite affecting alongside being a welcome change of pace. Matt Barlow - or Sergeant Matthew Barlow of the Georgetown Police Department, to give you some colour as to his current activities - is vocally a good fit, his delivery belying an obvious Geoff Tate (Queensryche) influence. My biggest bugbear with a lot of bands in the thrash and power-metal is that the drumming production sounds piss-weak. Somewhere along the line the rolling thunder of early metal became replaced with the impotent pitter-patter of double-bass pedals and a tinny, clattery quality to the rest of the kit. 

However, there's plenty of schlock to make up for this, including the wonderfully devilish incantations on 'Damien', hokey vocal effects on 'Jekyll & Hyde' (yes, of course, the two 'characters' speak to each other) and a suitably melodramatic finale in 'The Phantom Opera Ghost'. Bonus points, too, for doing a song called 'Frankenstein' which is about the doctor, not his monster, though it challenges us to ponder as to 'Who's the monster? Who's the victim?'. Hello, has anybody considered that, uh, maybe society is the monster in all this? Anyway, 'Frankenstein' is the highlight of Horror Show for me, though its Maiden-esque successor 'Dracula' runs it close. Hey buddy, have you ever wondered if society is the vampire?

My own personal gripes with the percussion aside, everything sounds pretty great on Horror Show without quite having the requisite sizzle or magical spark to elevate the album to the A-list. What could do it, I wonder? A spot of narration by Sir Christopher Lee, per Manowar? Perhaps a spot of narration from Orson Welles, per Manowar? Maybe, just being Manowar? I kid, not even Manowar want to be Manowar these days. Besides, whilst Iced Earth might not have been able to call upon the talents of Lee or Welles, the wonderfully-named Yunhui Percifield provides co-lead vocals on 'The Phantom Opera Ghost' and she does a top job, so that's something to be celebrated. Entertaining stuff, then, rammed to the rafters with all manner of ghouls 'n' ghosts - but whatever did happen to the 'Transylvania Twist'?

Opus Eponymous - Ghost

Provenance: For a band who I've followed avidly since they first burst onto the scene about ten years ago, my memories of how I became with Ghost acquainted are fuzzy.

I certainly recall my first live encounter with the band - March 2013, when they headlined that year's Jagermeister Tour; support acts were Gojira and The Defiled. Caught it down in Bournemouth with a few friends and family, tickets costing a princely five quid. Even back then, Ghost put on a hell of a show.

Anyway, last month I spent a week in North Macedonia and listened to fourth album Prequelle on the flights there and back. Having initially dismissed the latest as a bit ballad-heavy, I am now inclined to see it as their strongest album to date. So, having recently used this blog to pretend that I'm an adult with grown-up tastes, I now think it's time to check out a bunch of Scandinavians who wear masks and pretend to worship Satan.

Review: Prior to pressing 'play' on my stereo, I had a horrible impression that I was going to be less than fair with Opus Eponymous. What I saw in Bournemouth all those years ago was exciting and theatrical, but absolutely nothing like the slick outfit Ghost have subsequently become (I saw them in Brighton a couple of years ago for significantly more than a Lady Godiva). Likewise, the music on Prequelle is rich in texture and nuance, great swathes of orchestration wrapping around songs that have one eye on the charts (NB: this album didn't do any business in the US, whilst Prequelle peaked at number three on the Billboard Top 200).

Then again, at this point in time, there was still a lot of fun to be had around Ghost's identities. Taking a leaf out of the Kiss playbook, the songwriting on Opus Eponymous was credited to 'a Ghoul Writer'; the frontman was the mysterious Papa Emeritus, and the band referred to as 'a host of Nameless Ghouls'. Furthermore, the album sported cool artwork and reinvigorated a strain of metal that could be subtle yet heavy, sinister yet campy and unafraid to revel in showmanship. In short, they basically revived 1972-77 era Blue Oyster Cult, but this time, with added devilry.

(Even the symbol Ghost use has a touch of the Kronos motif Blue Oyster Cult deployed on all their albums. Catnip for BOC geeks such as myself.)

I don't think it comes as a surprise that a collection quite so schlocky as Opus Eponymous opens up with a church organ dirge. Pretty standard stuff, really, when it comes to albums that celebrate Old Nick. All well and good for setting the scene, but it's over quite quickly and we're into the galloping 'Con Clavi Con Dio', which is what all of us in the peanut gallery came for. It's fucking badass - and makes me realise that although Ghost were working with a much more basic palette than on subsequent releases, that ability to fuse tunefulness and heaviness was there from the word go. One suspects that were this to appear on Meliora or Prequelle, it would be washed with keyboards and other such orchestration. One thing that does stand out is that the music has more 'gaps' than the thick tapestry of sound that typifies later releases.

Still, this no-frills approach gives it a pleasingly retro feel. Vocals aside, much of Opus Eponymous sounds like it could've been disinterred from the mid-1970s, or maybe the first dark flowering of the NWOBHM. This ersatz dustiness - a false vintage - perhaps puts Ghost, at least here, in the bracket of some kind of eldritch Sha Na Na, inviting the listener on a journey to a time that never quite took place in the first place. I'm not suggesting for a moment that Ghost belong in any serious kind of discussion about hauntology but their Blue Oyster Cult cosplay act is damn convincing.

I keep mentioning BOC here, and at this juncture I should also throw in other obvious influences such as Mercyful Fate, Alice Cooper, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Slayer; they're all there. But - but - but - you can taste the fact that Tobias Forge (the leader and frontman of Ghost) is intimately familiar with Long Island's finest between, especially that golden stretch between Tyranny and Mutation and Spectres. Damn it all, the keys in 'Con Clavi Con Dio' sound like they've been ripped from 'Tattoo Vampire'. Elsewhere, there are echoes of 'Flaming Telepaths', 'Career of Evil', 'Quicklime Girl' - the good news is that Forge's borrowings are from the absolute prime cuts, so it's all good. Greta Van Fleet, take note; when you want to emulate your heroes, just try and do it well in the first instance, yeah?

In any case, none of this would add up to a hill of beans if the songs aren't there - and, praise Satan, they really are. Forge isn't a screamer; in fact, for a metal singer his voice is quite soft, made even more pliant by enunciation informed by his Swedish background. However, if anything this makes the music sound even more unworldly and uncanny; compare and contrast with Kiss, who for all their attempts to shock polite society, couldn't hide the fact that they were a bunch of Noo Yawk schlubs if their lives depended on it. Instead, Forge relies on a building a sense of drama and majesty to propel his infernal ditties and it works splendidly. Ghost celebrate the Father of Lies with all the pomp and ceremony of a High Mass, and choruses to tracks such as 'Elizabeth' (about Elizabeth Bathory), 'Stand By Him' and 'Death Knell' simultaneously soar to the heavens and plumb the fiery depths.

Having listened to Opus Eponymous again, so soon after spending a lot of time with Prequelle, has brought me not only a sense of relief (i.e. that it's a banger) but also reminded me why I was so revved up by Ghost almost a decade ago. It's yanked me back to a small concert room in Bournemouth, and to marvelling at the audacity of trying to conceal the band's identities in the online age. The latter couldn't last, of course, but I enjoyed the schtick at the time. With a whiff of brimstone and a smear of greasepaint, Ghost delved backwards to bring the joy of the old-timey rock 'n' roll spectacle to the twenty-first century, for which we should all be grateful.