Band:	Iced Earth
Album:	A Narrative Soundscape
Style:	Heavy metal, US power metal
Release date:	January 2022

01. Dystopia (A Narrative Soundscape)
02. Declaration Day (A Narrative Soundscape)
03. Wolf (A Narrative Soundscape)
04. Dante's Inferno (A Narrative Soundscape)
05. Melancholy (A Narrative Soundscape)
06. Dracula (A Narrative Soundscape)
07. Raven Wing (A Narrative Soundscape)
08. Angels Holocaust (A Narrative Soundscape)
09. The Clouding (A Narrative Soundscape)
10. Something Wicked (A Narrative Soundscape)
11. Watching Over Me (A Narrative Soundscape)
12. Seven Headed Whore (A Narrative Soundscape)
13. Damien (A Narrative Soundscape)
14. Question Of Heaven (A Narrative Soundscape)
15. Come What May (A Narrative Soundscape)

This is in the running for the least necessary review on this website. First of all, I don’t think anybody out there was still wondering whether or not they needed to invest their time in A Narrative Soundscape; the consensus has firmly established that this album has about as much value as mittens for a snake. Second, tominator already did a fine job of breaking down just how garbage this album is in the review that he published around the time of the initial release, and I have added no alternative opinions that might justify a second staff review. But, as sometimes happens, I started writing out some of these observations as a comment on the album thread to document my listening experience and eventually found that I had too much to say for a single post, so I decided I would rather shape those notes into a cohesive review instead.

Promotional materials circulated for A Narrative Soundscape failed to clarify what exactly the album is; it is a strange package that was obliquely advertised, though it’s hard to tell what the ideal campaign for this release would have been. Undoubtedly some obfuscation was necessary to move any units at all, because after grasping the album’s nature it becomes obvious what a hard sell it is. A Narrative Soundscape consists of 15 songs from Iced Earth’s back catalogue rearranged and reconstituted: the instrumental parts as digitally orchestrated backing tracks, the vocals as narration by Jon Schaffer. It is not what you would call a metal album, nor something that might conventionally be regarded as “music”. In retrospect, “a narrative soundscape” is exactly what it is.

Individual segments of this massive and foolish venture are intriguing. Jon Schaffer isn’t lacking for strength as a spoken word performer; he has honed a threatening baritone snarl across years of legitimate Iced Earth releases, and Sabaton even recognized his competence as a narrator enough to invite him to The Last Stand. The canned, sampled, and hastily mocked-up backing tracks very occasionally coalesce into something resembling a crappy dungeon synth/royalty-free electronica mutation of the original songs (operating according to the “broken clock” principle), and you know what, that isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve listened to professional musicians playing real instruments do much worse. There’s a sort of horror-RPG-soundtrack quality to tracks like “Dante’s Inferno” and the “Something Wicked” medley, for example, and it’s cheaply atmospheric enough for me to enjoy. There’s a hypothetical version of this album that reworks Iced Earth’s classics into a cool theatrical ambient suite for a Halloween party or tabletop miniature painting session, an extension of some decent interludes or calmer passages from real Iced Earth albums; I kind of like some of the electronic incursions and could imagine a more skilled hand making fun work of a remix album.

That said, what a bizarre, unnecessary, and generally terrible release this is. The tight pursestrings of the production and shoddy, rudimentary quality of the arrangements work against the songs far more than they complement whatever weird idea of a “soundscape” they are intended to convey. The recording is garbage; the gaudy, artificial feeling of the orchestrations is a perfect match for the distortion and poor sound filtering of Schaffer’s microphone, and each element constantly battles with the other to see which can faster achieve a sound thinner than tissue paper. Astute listeners even discerned an audible mouse-click in “Dystopia”, which testifies to the degree of professional oversight this received and the circumstances in which it was recorded. “Melancholy”, “Dracula”, and “Damien” offer some of the best explanations of just how ugly a project this is and how easily it causes the material to suffer (to say nothing of the listener): the instrumentation sounds like thrown-together samples from the original recordings mixed with generic drum tracks, stitched to the underside of rhythmless, passionless expressions of the lyrics. I have to assume that Schaffer avoided using any of the existing recordings aside from his own (and a few choirs) due to potential legal issues, so what you hear is, if not his own recordings, new stuff that fills those gaps insufficiently.

It probably does not need to be said that the overall effect is a deleterious one and no listener should compel themselves to experience Iced Earth in this particular fashion. The very idea that somebody would approach this as a serious musical venture is downright insane.

If there were any aspect of this project that could be considered more misguided than the “music”, it’s the attitude. Some of these song choices just sound so delusional, tone-deaf, unapologetic, whatever, in the wake of Schaffer’s involvement in the January 6 business. So much of Schaffer’s lyrical focus has always been about violently defying authority, and not just in a traditional heavy-metal-iconoclast way, but from a perspective of conspiracy. Every metal band at some point sings about how much authority sucks. Jon Schaffer was (and perhaps still is) convinced that the failures of governance are not the results of imperfect systems but of secrecy and design. He posits governmental, religious, and societal authorities as belonging to secret cabals that brainwash and oppress the masses, and in a more literal sense than could be considered an ordinary degree of cognizant skepticism toward leadership structures. He is obsessed with the idea of secret truths, secret societies, secret histories, etc. That is, in fact, the whole premise of the Something Wicked series: thousands of years ago, humanity came to Earth and slaughtered the original inhabitants, whose few survivors retreated into a hidden enclave from which they launched a millennia-spanning plan to brainwash, manipulate, and enslave mankind as revenge. As a story concept for an album series, pretty cool. As a key to illustrating somebody’s worldview, alarming.

Even something like “Angels Holocaust”, which, to the best of my knowledge, long precedes Schaffer’s fringe affiliations (in public, anyway), now takes on this uncomfortable sense of a fantasy being illustrated or a call to action. And touching far more politically obvious rhetoric in songs like “Declaration Day” or “Dystopia” – starting the album that way – immediately pulls A Narrative Soundscape into the context of Schaffer’s ongoing legal troubles (and presumably financial ones that necessitated this quick-and-dirty release in the first place). I can’t hear him angrily preaching about rebellion, civil disobedience, overthrowing the government, and a malevolent new world order without interpreting this as a direct statement of his own erroneous, misinformed, and ultimately deadly political convictions. “Come What May” sounds like an admission that he’d do it again given half a chance.

We’ll see how time molds the future of Jon Schaffer and Iced Earth’s ultimate legacy. For now, at least it is entirely clear that A Narrative Soundscape has no business existing and no one should allow themselves to be bamboozled into listening to it except out of morbid curiosity.

Also… that is a wild choice of cover for an album like this.