Iced Earth - Alive In Athens DVD

[Liu]

Iced Earth - Alive In Athens DVD
Century Media

Back in the year 1999 Iced Earth released their landmark live album, Alive In Athens. It garnered widespread praise from fans and critics alike and didn't take long before it was speculated over the existence of video footage of the same concert. Jon Schaffer and company, however, never made mention of such footage. Fast forward to 2006 and the band's old label, Century Media, announces the release of Alive In Athens on DVD. Apparently, there was footage all along and Century Media owned it. It didn't take long for Jon Schaffer to criticize the label's decision to release the video, which in his view was poor and not up to the standards of Iced Earth's legacy.

Whatever, the footage is actually good.

I have no doubt that Scahffer would rather have a big budget concert filming on par to Iron Maiden's Rock In Rio, but there's a reason why Live After Death is considered Maiden's hallmark concert video. Unlike some of the more expensively shot videos out there, Alive In Athens doesn't have a thousand camera cuts every minute so you get a good view of what the band is doing onstage. The video quality is a little grainy, but that should only be a concern to diehard technophiles who bitch over every last minut detail rather than enjoying whats being shown in front of them.

Alls not well however. Three of the songs performed that night had to be cut from the final edit due to unspecified issues. I can live without the band's title song and even Slave To The Dark, but the loss of A Question Of Heaven, in my view the band's most brilliant song, is quite a blow to the DVD. That song on the Alive In Athens cd version contains Matthew Barlow's single greatest vocal performance, so not having it preserved in video format is very lamentable. Since these three songs were probably played at the end of the set, its entirely possible that they just ran out of footage. There are also small unnatural jumps in between songs, something decent editing could had easily avoided. Lastly, while not a big issue, some banter in between songs have been omitted, the one sticking out the most being Matt's intro to The Hunter. However, a few things were added in, like an intro to Dante's Inferno that's absent on the cd version all those years ago.

While it's not without its issues, I'll never understand why it took 7 years for this concert footage to see the light of day. Recommended for longtime Iced Earth fans, especially those who still wish that Barlow never left the band.


01. Intro
02. Burning Times
03. Vengeance Is Mine
04. Dark Saga
05. Last Laugh
06. Cast In Stone
07. Last December
08. Pure Evil
09. Desert Rain
10. Dante's Inferno
11. The Hunter
12. Melancholy (Holy Martyr)
13. Angel's Holocaust
14. Stormrider
15. Path I Choose
16. Watching Over Me
17. Diary
18. Blessed Are You
19. When The Night Falls
20. My Own Savior
21. Travel In Stygian
22. Violate
23. Stand Alone
24. Brainwashed
25. Disciples Of The Lies
26. I Died For You
27. Prophecy
28. Birth Of The Wicked
29. The Comin Curse
30. Epilogue

Score: 7/10