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Iced Earth - Plagues Of Babylon (2014)

Posted By: apocalipsys2014
Iced Earth - Plagues Of Babylon (2014)

Iced Earth - Plagues Of Babylon (2014)
Year & Label: 2014, Century Media Records | CD#: 9983620
Flac (image) | MP3 CBR 320 Kbps | Artwork (JPG, 300 dpi) | File-hosts: Uploaded.net
Power/Thrash Metal | FLAC: 480 MB | Artwork: 80 MB | MP3: 150 MB | 5% WinRAR Recovery

EAC Secure-rip with LOG+CUE+COVERS | Source: eMule

Iced Earth are going through a bit of a renaissance period at the moment. While they do have many hardcore fans who would defend their back catalogue to the end, honestly the heavy metal titans haven’t made a truly exciting album in about twenty years; that is, they hadn’t, until the release of 2011’s Dystopia. After two decades of putting out stale and generally uninteresting meat and potatoes heavy metal, finally they had an album that managed to match up to their first few records, one with the power and energy to justify their continued status as metal heroes. Plagues of Babylon is its follow-up, and thankfully they have managed to take this momentum forward and release another great album.

Opening with the title track’s marching drum beat (strangely similar to Dystopia in that regard) and ominous harmonized leads, as soon as the heavy, chugging main riff kicks in it’s clear that this album is going to be a worthy successor. Noticeably, the production is very good, giving the guitars a sharp razor edge that albums like the totally flat The Glorious Burden lacked. Mainman Jon Schaffer churns out some of the best riffs in his career on this album, especially on the raging and thrashy Democide. Some new blood is brought in with an all new rhythm section, bassist Luke Appleton helping give the album its low-end crunch while drummer Raphael Saini (who was sadly since left) punctuates the songs with intricate tom patterns and ride cymbal work while maintaining a constant driving power. Stu Block meanwhile, who debuted as vocalist on Dystopia, continues to make sure that fan favourite Matt Barlow is not missed too much, his gruff voice helping give the songs a darker edge while his highs are utilised when appropriate, never being over-used.

This is hardly perfect though. Plagues is a bit front-loaded, the second half never quite managing to match up to the first, especially considering it contains two somewhat unnecessary covers. The first is Spirit of the Times by Sons of Liberty, a Jon Schaffer side project, and you can’t help but question the logic in covering your own material, especially as aside from the darker and heavier overtones it’s not massively different from the original. The second, Highwayman by Jimmy Webb, is hardly electrifying either.

That said, many of the problems that plagued previous Iced Earth efforts no longer show up. The obligatory cheesy metal ballad only appears once in If I Could See You, which is one of the better ones they’ve done, and only a couple of songs have a clean guitar intro, unlike on The Dark Saga where they appear on nearly every song. Iced Earth are a band who are at their best when they’re firing on all cylinders, and that is largely what they stick to here. With it’s almost death metal cover art, Plagues is for the most part a balls-out thrill ride, and honestly might be Iced Earth’s most complete work to date.

www.metal-archives.com
Musicians:

Vocals : Stu Block
Guitars : Jon Schaffer
Guitars : Troy Seele
Bass : Luke Appleton
Drums : Raphael Saini

Produced by Jon Schaffer
Recorded at Principal Studios, Senden, Germany
Mixed by Eliran Kantor, mastered at Truebusyness Studios, Berlin, Germany

Track List:

01. Plagues Of Babylon [7:48]
02. Democide [5:22]
03. The Culling [4:27]
04. Among The Living Dead [5:15]
05. Resistance [5:00]
06. The End [7:16]
07. If I Could See You [3:57]
08. Cthulhu [6:04]
09. Peacemaker [5:02]
10. Parasite [3:30]
11. Spirit Of The Times [5:07]
12. Highwayman [3:13]
13. Outro [0:25]

Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011

EAC extraction logfile from 14. January 2014, 2:05

Iced Earth / Plagues Of Babylon

Used drive : ATAPI iHAP122 9 Adapter: 3 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Installed external ASPI interface

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files\FLAC\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -V -8 -T "Date=%year%" -T "Genre=%genre%" -T"COMMENT=Ripped by Ilijan" -8 -V %source%


TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 7:47.41 | 0 | 35065
2 | 7:47.41 | 5:22.25 | 35066 | 59240
3 | 13:09.66 | 4:26.45 | 59241 | 79235
4 | 17:36.36 | 5:14.41 | 79236 | 102826
5 | 22:51.02 | 4:59.41 | 102827 | 125292
6 | 27:50.43 | 7:15.55 | 125293 | 157972
7 | 35:06.23 | 3:56.51 | 157973 | 175723
8 | 39:02.74 | 6:04.16 | 175724 | 203039
9 | 45:07.15 | 5:02.22 | 203040 | 225711
10 | 50:09.37 | 3:30.20 | 225712 | 241481
11 | 53:39.57 | 5:07.29 | 241482 | 264535
12 | 58:47.11 | 3:12.66 | 264536 | 279001
13 | 62:00.02 | 0:24.51 | 279002 | 280852


Range status and errors

Selected range

Filename D:\Ilijan\Iced Earth - Plagues Of Babylon.wav

Peak level 98.4 %
Extraction speed 6.3 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC B6AA07E9
Copy CRC B6AA07E9
Copy OK

No errors occurred


AccurateRip summary

Track 1 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [FC4A3483] (AR v2)
Track 2 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [3BF116BF] (AR v2)
Track 3 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [A9A24D80] (AR v2)
Track 4 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [C5C6754A] (AR v2)
Track 5 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [3323BEBC] (AR v2)
Track 6 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [E5BBAB3C] (AR v2)
Track 7 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [205E5305] (AR v2)
Track 8 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [BF562A7D] (AR v2)
Track 9 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [C90A0CD4] (AR v2)
Track 10 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [67E01BED] (AR v2)
Track 11 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [6F9CADA9] (AR v2)
Track 12 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [7181C51F] (AR v2)
Track 13 accurately ripped (confidence 1) [49D9AAEA] (AR v2)

All tracks accurately ripped

End of status report

–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.3

[CTDB TOCID: vZv7qbsLU2vdRG4TAih1WdY.DzA-] found, Submit result: vZv7qbsLU2vdRG4TAih1WdY.DzA- has been confirmed
[25b6b97b] (8/9) Accurately ripped
[bf35dff1] (1/9) No match


==== Log checksum C03FBDB9A961D97CA356193F72CF5B41021409B69511236078E88CAFE61969FF ====

Not my rip, not my scan-job. Thx very much to the original uploader Ilijan [MMT]!
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