Iced Earth!

OK, so I’ve finally wrangled up enough bandwidth that I could toss some pics up. I’ve also begun my transition away from PicasaWeb in favor of Flickr for photosharing. There are a thousand reasons for this, but that’s the subject of another post.

Turisas were pretty intense. They came out on stage in full Viking warrior attire, amid the orchestral crashes of the opening track on their first CD. Stream some here if you haven’t heard their particular brand of Finnish folk viking metal [sic]. The vocalist looked particularly hardcore:

Following Turisas were Annihilator, who played a strong set of classic thrash. Most of the riffs were straight out of the book of Megadeth, but the crowd dug them, and that always makes for a good set. I myself can definitely use some more thrash influence in my own riffs, so I’m glad I got to see them.

Iced Earth were phenomenal. As soon as they stepped on stage, a little part of me died, as I finally came to terms with the fact that Matt Barlow really had left the band, and I’d have to put up with the astoundingly different vocal stylings of Tim “Ripper” Owens. It was still an Iced Earth show, and they played a strong list, if a bit heavy on the new material (which I of course don’t dig).

As their final encore, they played “Iced Earth,” as everyone had been expecting. The crowd sang along with the final guitar riff, and I got video of it, albeit it with horrible audio quality. I should point out that although it’s a bit beyond the range of the mic in my camera, Tim holds a high-pitched wail for a very long time, and releases it just before the video ends. It’s impressive, to say the least.

[qt:http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/pics/icedearth-icedearth-small.mp4 320 256]

Remember, full album is up on Flickr. Also, if anybody has trouble with that embedded video, please let me know. Still trying to work out a decent way of doing that, so I don’t have to have videos load in a new tab each time. If you do have trouble, though, here’s the direct link to the video.