Iced Earth: Something Wicked duology

Edit: Posting this made me put on Ten Thousand Strong, and I probably will have to vote Framing Armageddon just for how damn good that one song is, and Crucible has nothing that really comes close to it.

Iced Earth are one of my favourite bands do my ratings for them do tend to be towards the higher marks, but yeah, these two albums are both on the lower end. 

To be honest I didn't think that their last one Plagues of Babylon was entirely up to standard either though, yet I loved Dystopia. All the same I'm hoping that Stu Block sticks around now as I find him much more suitable for their sound than Tim Owens (who I think is generally better in his own groups and not ones where he replaces an iconic frontman like Iced Earth and Judas Priest) and to my ears the whole Barlow reunion was a disaster for them. 

I've always kinda felt as well that Iced Earth fucked up these albums with everything going on in their line-up at the time. The change in vocalist alone means the concept lacks consistency, but they always said that they were going to re-do vocal tracks of Framing Armageddon with Matt just so listeners could have the complete experience with the same singer. In fact they said that the only reason they re-did the original Something Wicked trilogy with Tim was so fans could have that experience with the original three songs and two albums; then they go and change singer between the two albums and basically fuck it all up. They did do a few tracks as b-sides to the I Walk Alone single, but the boxset version of both albums with Matt was never released (that Box of the Wicked set just puts in the Tim Owens version of Framing Armageddon).

Matt quits Pyramaze for Iced Earth, effectively fucking up that band until last year when they finally made their comeback, and then before we know it is out of Iced Earth for a second time. So what was that whole reunion for? There are no positives as I see it, just a whole bunch of negatives. The Crucible of Man is the weakest of the Barlow voiced Iced Earth albums to my ears as well.