One day in high-school, in 1992, my friend Or, with whom I discovered and was listening to metal gave me a cassette of this band called Iced Earth and told me that was great metal right there. The album was Night Of The Stormrider. Listening to it, I was hooked by the galloping riffs, their speed and intensity. I couldn't get enough of it. It went on to become one of my all-time favourite albums to this day. It's one of those "to-go-to" albums whenever I want something familiar to relax to or to get pumped with.
I began following this group's releases and quickly got their first s/t album, another very good one and my second favourite by them (yeah I know, not very popular; don't care).
Several years later, during my military service, their 4th album, The Dark Saga came out. In it were stellar songs like The Hunter. However, the album ends with the trio of songs under the name of The Suffering:
a) Scarred b) Slave To The Dark c) A Question Of Heaven.
Three fantastic songs that both my wife and I are hooked to. A Question Of Heaven is in my opinion one of the best and most beautiful songs ever written, metal or not. Matthew Barlow's singing is sublime and his scream at the end is hair-raising. I would listen to this on full volume in my room whenever I would come home from the army on vacations and annoy the hell out of my parents and the neighbours.
Good times.
This needs to be played loud. Really loud.
Iced Earth is pretty damn sweet. One of the first power metal acts I discovered (in 2005 though), along with Blind Guardian. Something Wicked This Way Comes is my personal favorite, as it was my first album heard by them, and thus my default Iced Earth album in my head.
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