Days Of Purgatory

Triple gold and silver colored vinyl LP pressing. Days of Purgatory is a collection of re-recorded and remixed songs from Iced Earth. Matt Barlow has made the impossible possible: for the first time in the history of Iced Earth - which have been 7 years - a singer stayed in the band for more than one album. Thus, Jon Schaffer saw in Barlow his eternal vocalist and rewarded him with the honor to re-record the songs from before his time and let him take over the vocals for these songs. The vocals from Barlow are significantly better than the ones from his predecessors and what makes the re-recorded songs even better is that Barlow has given the songs his own touch. He hasn't just sung the same notes as Gene and John, but instead he has changed them here and there and even the regular re-issue of the songs with Barlow on in just sound different, because he sings them angrier. This is something you could especially hear on the Night of the Stormrider songs. John Greely was good, but he was too soft on the mid-range notes, while Barlow is completely harsh on Angels Holocaust, Desert Rain and Pure Evil. Before I have listened to this compilation I had no doubt that he will rescue the songs from the debut album or Enter the Realm, respectively (Nightmares is from the demo) with his voice and that the songs from the Night of the Stormrider album will sound way better, but I didn't expect that he will give some parts a complete different interpretation. The high shrieks from John Greely were replaced with actual high singing notes, same with the vocals from Gene Adam, which mainly sounded like he has just read the lyrics. Matt Barlow puts energy and melody in his vocals, which just makes the songs overall better.