At around 15:20 I left for the Arena (a very small venue as you already know from previous reviews) and I arrived there a little before 15:40. At 18:00 was announced that the concert has to be moved to a bigger venue (Macumba). At 20:30 the place is already full of fans (900) waiting for Iced Earth to come out. Ok, the bad stuff first: due to the sudden change of venue, there were some problems, all interviews, meet n' greets... were cancelled. Also, this show was a "little" different from the rest of the tour: the band played for about 1 hour and 45 minutes and unfortunately they didn't play any song from the first 3 albums... :-( Sadly, some fans were very disappointed with this...

           

At 21:10 the doors opened. The stage looked like the Horror Show album, with a large backdrop and two big drawings from the CD booklet (Wolf & Damien) on the sides of the stage. There was no opening band. At 22:00 the show started. A moment of darkness announces the coming out of the band. The instant Jon Schaffer, Matt Barlow, Larry Tarnowski, James MacDonough and their new drummer Richard Christy from Death and Control Denied took the stage, it was like firebombs were shaking the venue. People went C-R-A-Z-Y. One of the most intense acts I've seen in a while. The first part of the show consisted of stuff from "The Dark Saga" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes" albums. The opener "Burning Times" sounded incredible and created an eruption from the crowd that was very intense. Parts of the frontrow began wild banging and singing. Without a pause they went right into "Vengeance Is Mine". Everyone was screamin' and bangin their heads. Then Jon steped up to the mic and explained the situation to the audience and he apologized for the relatively short set... Well, the show has just begun but the atmosphere is already hot. Up next was the super aggressive "Stand Alone" and they also played the excellent and powerful "The Hunter" (a song I love). The best moments were on "Watching Over Me" when the audience were singing "oh I know, oh I know, he's watching over me" creating a great atmosphere, it was very touching... The two trilogies ("The Suffering" trilogy and "Something Wicked" trilogy) are absolutely destructive when played live. They were received enthusiastically by the audience and had really excellent moments. We had pyros and fire, atmospheric parts... KILLER! It put me in an euphoric state of bliss :-) Also, forgot to mention that inbetween "The Suffering" and "Something Wicked" they also played the beautiful "I Died For You" from "The Dark Saga" album, the crowd kept singing along with Matt for the entire song...

   

The band takes a break and left a crowd full of people screaming for more and chanting "Iced Earth, Iced Earth". And it was time to kill... again!! They came back to play 4 songs from their latest album "Horror Show". They started with "Wolf". Personally I think this song sounds much better live than on CD. I was not expecting it to be THAT damn good. The next song was one of the highlights of this part of the show, "Damien", which came off strong and dark with a spoken part by Jon Schaffer and featured a light show that brought the song to life with a real horror-like atmosphere. AMAZING! The lights went red and an acoustic guitar was brought in for Jon and then the band made my night by playing my favorite Horror Show song, "Dracula". It started acoustically, but it was just the calm before the storm :-) Fast and loud, "Dracula" is metal heaven. We also had a lot of pyros and fire. Needless to say Iced Earth kicked our asses with that one. This was another HUGE highlight of the show. After a little over an hour and a half, the band closed with "Jack" that kicked up the energy level with trademark Iced energy and naturally everyone -and I mean EVERYONE- was screaming their asses off to the "I cut you once, I cut you twice" part of the song. After that the guys said thank-you and threw out picks and sticks and the show was over at 23:45.

   

After the show I spent an hour with the band and I had the pleasure of talking with Mr. Schaffer, he invited me to have a drink with him. Very nice guy who has lots of interesting things to say (he also smokes like a chimney!!!) I finally left Macumba at around 2:50. Despite the fact that they played a shorter set, they really satisfied the audience. They ripped through sixteen songs over a nineteen-minute set that rarely gave anyone a chance to catch their breath. Each of the songs was executed to perfection. Great lights. Really nice sound too. My one complaint is that the sound engineer got the levels wrong and vocalist Barlow was too quiet in the mix (this is a shame!) but he sang like hell and he didn't stop even a minute headbanging (by the way, this guy has a pretty impressive mane!) Particularly impressive live was Richard Christy's drumming, he's fucking great! Iced Earth is one of the best live bands that I have seen and believe me I have seen enough! Well, like I said before... IT KICKED ASS! Thanks Iced Earth for giving such a cool show... Let's hope next time they can play the full set and satisfy everybody... Remember, if you want to see them in concert in the coming weeks, hurry up and get your tickets before they are as "dead" as the mummy. -Review & photos by Marina-