After three years of waiting (not including ALIVE IN ATHENS[1999] which is a live album, and The Melancholy EP[2001] ) the American Gods ICED EARTH are releasing their new album named 'HORROR SHOW' which has as a thematology some of the most famous monsters such as Wolf, Damien, Dracula, Frankenstein and more, but how good is it ? to find out just keep on reading.

To be honest when i first listened to the cd i wasn't so impressed by the result except from the Damien song which really knocked me off from the first time, but as i got to listen to it more and more times everything suddenly changed and i begun to like it very much (always with some exceptions). The band's improvement is obvious throughout the songs especially Matt's voice which keeps the old ICED EARTH style but adding to it some really cool screams; and the new members Steve DiGiorgio(Testament, Death, Sadus) the bass player who already left the band and Richard Christy (Death, Control Denied) behind the drum kit put their own new touch in ICED EARTH'S music.

Each monster's music was created in such a way so that the listener would actually feel and see the monster as if it was near him, a perfect example would be Frankenstein of whom the music is slow filled with heavy aggressiveness and Damien which has the appropriate mystical,dark atmosphere with a sense of melancholy and despair. In 'HORROR SHOW' we also have a cool cover song in Iron Maiden's Transylvania which was unexpectently good,fast and hard filled with Jon's fast guitar!

As all the previous ICED EARTH studio albums 'HORROR SHOW' was recorded at Morrisound Studios using the trusted production skills of Jim Morris as well, and the result ? Absolutely perfect if you except the fact that in some parts DiGiorgio's bass gets kinda lost between Christy's Drums and Schaffer's guitar.

I personally believe that 'HORROR SHOW' is a great album not as great as 'Dark Saga' or 'Burnt Offerings' was, but still it is a worthy successor of 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' and an album worth checking out.