I think that as a music nerd you'll sooner or later discover the charm of the live album, and that even though there is an overabundance of live footage on internet streaming platforms that one can watch and listen to, some live albums captures a band's or musician's art in a more definitive way than other recording or footage. Among my favorites that are in my personal collection are EMPEROR's "Emperial Live Ceremony," "Hell over Sofia - 20 Years of Chaos and Confusion" by HYPOCRISY, "Forging the Land of Thousand Lakes" by AMORPHIS or KATATONIA's "Live Consternation" - short of seeing the bands live it's a great window into the energy and dynamism that these bands have. ICED EARTH is a band that I'll always have a weak spot for, they made some of my favorite Power Metal albums, some of which I've played ad nauseam when I first discovered them, and it's still the kind of band to me that I can listen to any time. Being quite familiar with their discography but not having seen them live unfortunately I was quite keen to dive into this three hour long live album and get an even deeper connection to their music.

"Alive in Athens" was recorded in Rondon Club in Athens in 1999 where ICED EARTH has played a sold out shows two night in a row (about 2000 people fit in the venue). The recording is from both those nights and the album has more than thirty songs on it. The album came out on CD and on a five picture disc vinyl set, which wasn't produced with the care it deserved: the vinyl version was a direct transfer from the CD, so it didn't have a full dynamic range mastering, there were split up tracks and one song was missing. The 20th anniversary vinyl edition fixes all problems listed above, it also leaves in Matt Barlow's banter which the earlier version left out (at lest the 1999 vinyl edition). The album has turned out to be a major success, in Greece it is a certified gold, and it is widely considered to be one of the best Heavy Metal live albums. And it is easy to see why: ICED EARTH is of course a stellar band whose live performances sound like their studio albums, but there are some really breathtaking moments where one can truly appreciate the dynamism of the performance.

ICED EARTH is a notoriously consistent band - Jon Schaffer famously doesn't listen to any new music so that he doesn't get influenced by it - so everything on the set-list fits together perfectly. The tour was in support of the 1998 album "Something Wicked This Way Comes" so it obviously opens with one of the album's song ("Burning Times") and there is a number of other songs from that album, but having so much great material written already at that point, they go and pick the most iconic songs from the previous albums, and the whole concert feels like an absolute winning streak. The audience's response is fantastic, you crowd can sing along to every song, the enthusiasm level really goes through the roof. ICED EARTH's music is always intense, whether they play thunderous, pumped songs like "Pure Evil," or emotional mid-tempo ballads like "I Died For You". Shifting between tempos and moods makes for a well-rounded set-list and the sheer amount of great material is astounding. The band's performance is a tour de force, it is tight to an almost inhumane degree, what Matt Barlow does here vocally is jaw-dropping, one of my favorite moments are his fry screams in one of the climactic parts "Dante's Inferno" - I have goosebumps just thinking about it.

"Alive in Athens" absolutely lives up to its hype, it takes a bit of a dedicated listener to sit through a three hours long album, but anyone who purchases a five LP set has to be one already. The main motivation for buying this edition for those who have this on CD already will be mainly the vinyl mastering, which sounds amazing indeed. It's an album that deserves to be released with the most perfect sound possible, true fans and audiophiles will certainly appreciate it.