Leaked Happiness from the Veins of Musical Genius

Okay, so over the past couple of weeks... about three actually hehe, some awesome albums from some of my favorite bands have been leaked all over the internet. Now, today the new single from Iced Earth was leaked. Since, I have loved Iced Earth since oh about the 8th Grade I was all over it. This new coming album marks the return of their old lead singer who was on such albums as The Dark Saga, Horror Show, and well... all of my favorite albums. :-). Now from this new songs on this EP I can only say we have a lot of good stuff in store forus as far as Iced Earth goes! I'll do a play by play of the songs here for ya.

I Walk Alone - Not a typical Iced Earth song. Starts of with some heavy melodic chords, then some nice heavy palm muting. Not typical lyrics either, "Fallacies of man" and "Dying in the purest form" being some cool lines from the song. I recommend everyone listening to this song who has similar views on politics as I do. This song pretty much just talks about everything I've been saying for a long time. Mankind is a very dishonest species, and we don't care about each other the way we need to. According to the song "I am the truth, and I walk alone." Whats even better about this song is that I feel like Schaffer is helping people grow as musicians still, the guitar solo from Troy Seele was really melodic and slow, but still kept that flair that is Iced Earth. Overall, an awesome song.

Setian Massacre - Really Fast Paced and fun song. Awesome guitar solo, reminds me of well, I can't think of it right now but I feel like I've heard these tricks before. Still, awesome solo. There's a typical backing rhythm throughout the entire song which is my only complaint. But that is one of the typical things from Iced Earth, they always make up for it with everything else. Like the awesome vocal harmonics throughout the song, and the way the guitars can harmonize with the vocals... which is awesome. Overall, not as good as "I walk Alone" but still awesome.

The Clouding - Really soft introduction, sounds very cool though. I'd love to actually see how this would be played live, there's even a slide guitar in the intro. Barlowe's voice is actually beautiful on this track and the harmonizing between Schaffer and Barlowe is just awesome. A wonderful and soft song, something we don't hear from Iced Earth very often. Very nice utilization of harmonizations between the instruments, and nice use of the slide guitar. Starts getting heavy around 5:30... oh man... awesome heavy build up. Really cool use of chord progressions in these heavier parts. You can still feel the old Iced Earth, but you know it's a new game. They even say "We'll never be the same" when the awesome guitar licks are being laid down. Wow, listening to this I realize where I got my influence in some of the things I've written on guitar over the years. Which really isn't a bad thing.

So overall, what can I give this EP? I'd say 8.5 - 9, but I'm only going off of 3 awesome songs here. I could have easily said 7.5 - 8, but I figured since I realized where some of my influences came from I'd give them a little extra. This is a really good EP though, and I recommend it to all of the Iced Earth listeners. If you enjoyed The Glorious Burden you should enjoy this EP, even though it's a lot different. Ehh, Just go out and buy the damn thing...

I wanted to do a review Opeth's new album, but someone already did a review of it which totally agrees with everything I would have said. The guy who runs Questionable Content, one of my favorite web comics also runs a music blog called "Yelling About Music" and his latest entry was Opeth, here's the link Yelling About Music. So if you enjoy Opeth and Iced Earth, you should back here once in a while... I think I'm just going to be doing my own music Blog... and well still have my little journal entries too, but still a lot of music as well.

Misunderstandings...

I really don't understand life sometimes. I know I've done things in the past that have always caught up with me... and it seems that they are finally catching up with me now. I had this wonderful friend for about two years and for most of our relationship we liked each other. Only I had a girlfriend. I left the girlfriend though to be with this new girl... and I now know exactly how my ex girlfriend. I was left, alone. While this new girl still wants to be best of friends with me, and she said if she feels the same way again she wants me to be the first to know so we can be together again... she says for now we need to be best of friends because she fell out of love with me. I don't know what else I should do. I have confidence that her and I will get back together, and I really hope and feel that her and I are together forever. We were supposed to be... she told me first that she wanted to be with me forever. I can't be angry with her though... I really can't. I feel so much for her that I just can't be angry with her... but it doesn't stop me from drinking a 6-pack of Sam Adams tonight... it won't stop me. I'll also be going to the gym everyday from now on since the only thing that restricts me now is my band. I love my band and I have the feeling that we will get famous some day... There's too much talent in the band for it not to be recognized. I have an awesome voice according to people... Mikey is just one of the best guitarists I have ever heard, Matt is awesome bassist... and he was never classically trained or anything... and Mick who has been playing drums since he came out of the womb is just awesome... I need to still have hope for everything... I don't know how to be emo so I can't sit here and think that the world is going to end because the love of my life left me. If it was really meant to be then she will come back to me, she will find her way back to me. I wish I really understood how love worked, because then maybe I'd stop hurting from all of this... but it's something that we have to deal with. It'll be fine one day I guess. Until then I think that everyone should come out and see "Man Who Flies" this Saturday in Syracuse... We are playing at a place called Funk N' Waffles. It's going to be awesome. Hope to see everyone there.