ICED EARTH – Interview with Guitarist and Band Founder John Schaffer

If there is one metal band most deserving of accepting IRON MAIDEN’s crown it is ICED EARTH. ICED EARTH exudes the same type of larger-than-life persona as MAIDEN. Epic song structures, powerful choruses, soaring vocal highs, memorable guitar riffs and intriguing story lines reveal a special breed of band, and their fans recognize this. ICED EARTH has headlined metal’s greatest summer festival, Wacken, has earned gold records in Greece for selling over 500,000 copies of their “Alive in Athens” album, and tore through the Billboard charts with their last couple of albums.

ICED EARTH’s most recent development comes by way of their “Framing Armageddon: Something Wicked Part 2” album. This album is the second part of the “Something Wicked” saga, which first began as a three-part song on the “Something Wicked This Way Comes” album in 1998. “The Crucible of Man,” the story's first installment, featured former JUDAS PRIEST vocalist Tim “The Ripper” Owens, and showed the group utilize a more organic array of instruments and cinematic sound bites. The second portion revisits some of the same organic instrumentation such as cellos and bongos, but moves with a greater flow due to the group focusing more on traditional metal songs.

“Framing Armageddon” also signifies the return of long-time ICED EARTH vocalist Matthew Barlow. Barlow shows a spirit and connectivity to past ICED EARTH efforts (especially the “Something Wicked This Way Comes” recording) that wasn’t present with Owens, even though those albums were great in their own way. Band founder and lead guitarist, John Schaffer chatted via phone with Metal Centre on Barlow’s triumphant return, as well as filling us in on the new album.

Please explain how the storyline of “Framing Armageddon” carries over to “The Crucible of Man.”

“Framing” is the story of the human invasion on earth and the attempted genocide of the Setians. It goes on up until just before Set’s birth, which is ten thousand years. So it takes place from invasion, ten thousand years—that’s “Framing Armageddon.” Part two, “The Crucible,” opens up with the birth of Set. In a timeline we would know, he is born six months before the birth of Jesus Christ. First he is born, which is the track “Behold the Wicked Child.”

Then you hear “Minions of the Watch.” This track is about the guys who are in charge of guiding and raising him. He will travel around the world and learn about human history. Certainly, once it is revealed to him and what he is, he will start to learn about Setian history, and the Order of the Rose and Domino Decree and all these things he is going to be charged with to help bring Armageddon to mankind. He is actually the Anti-Christ to man, but the savior to his own race.

It starts there and goes on until modern day. It does not end. The song “Come What May” is not an ending to the story. It takes the story and says it’s up to humanity now. You have a path to choose, which one are you gonna take? In the story, the whole reason humans are so easy to be manipulated and fucked with is because of our fears, insecurities and dishonesty. In the story, we are the same creatures since we first came here, and that is the problem. We haven’t evolved as beings (bar technology). In order to evolve, we need to embrace truth and honesty. These are the things that would lead us to a path to god, which is up where the Grand Architect and the Setians are.

The story is very deep and what is cool about it is you can apply anything from human history to something in the universe to make some great story telling. The Setians created all the world religions because that will help keep us divided. They are infiltrated into every country and society. They are the ones pulling the strings; they are the puppet masters.

Are the Setians reptilian?

In their normal state, they are humanoid in the fact that they walk on two legs and they have arms, but they tend to look a little more cat-like, like a mixture of a cat and an elf in the way their ears are. You could say they are reptilian in the way their jaw lines are. You could make a case for that, but I would say they are more cat-like. That is the way I designed them. The elder council has the ability to shape shift. This culture is the direct descendants of god—The Architect of the Universe. The elder council is the most gifted of the Setian culture. They have the ultimate abilities. All of the people are highly evolved, way above human beings. They don’t even have weapons because they don’t even think that way. It is a whole different existence.

They don’t think about war like we do? They don’t have that sense of taking from others and destroying whomever gets in the way?

No. In “The Prophecy” when they see that human beings are going to come, they have to accept that is the will of the Architect. As painful as it is for the ten thousand who are chosen to leave their families behind to be slaughtered in “The Setian Massacre,” they still have to accept that because it is the will of the Architect. They are planning a way for men to destroy themselves, but they won’t do it in a way that you would think. They don’t have any weapons. What they have is the power of Mother Nature. They have the power of destiny. They don’t think in terms of guns.

There is an end to this story that will explain everything, but it is not going to be revealed anytime soon. I have plans for this to go way beyond a couple of heavy metal albums. This is something that has the potential to get really big and grow into a lot of other mediums. There are many stories to reveal and explanations to lay out. There is even a story about the galaxy mankind came from and why did they come. We know that they came after this knowledge and this power, but with all these galaxies full of planets, what is the story of human beings? There is an oriental planet, a black planet, a Caucasian planet and a red planet. Why did they all get together for this invasion? It is very cool, man. It is very big!

That is like “Star Wars.”

It is, in terms of each sides of the story telling. It has endless possibilities. That is what makes it so great. I have this application that I could just focus on doing a record about the rise and fall of The Third Reich, and how the Setians were involved in that. That is what is so cool about it. You could take any event in history, twist it the Something Wicked universe to make awesome story telling. Humanity was definitely a major influence for writing this album.

Can you give me more details about the other media you would like to use to tell this story?

My next plan is to what is going to be a comic book one-shot. I’m going to produce and pay for this project myself, and use it as a demo to take to different publishing companies. With that, I’ll take the box set for the “Something Wicked” saga that is going to come out in Christmas of ’09, and that will be the thing that I shop. So I’ll be able to pitch my story and show the base that is already built into it and find out what kind of a deal I can get for that. If they want to do a four-to-six-part miniseries of graphic novels or if they want to do a run of comic books that may last for ten or twelve years will be things spoken about.

That is the first step. I want to get into the comic book world and see what results we get. If people really like it, then we can start shopping the idea of doing animated features and maybe movies. Also, we could look at doing video games, action figures—the whole thing. It is so large and vast that I’m very protective of it, and I want to do it right. I’m not going to rush into anything. I want to be in control of it. I want to make sure I have artistic, creative control from the beginning because it is my thing, completely.

Do you envision a certain comic book artist?

There are a lot of guys who I would love to work with, but I would be happy with the team who has been doing the album covers lately. We’ll just have to wait and see. I would love to have Jim Lee draw. That dude fucking rocks, man! You should check out the series called “Batman: Hush.” It’s a Jim Lee series. It is one of the most amazing looking comic books I have ever seen! I just started looking at where I wanted to take the book, and I would like to use “Hush” as the inspiration for the way I would like the “Something Wicked” story to be told, especially in the lay out.

A musical theme runs throughout both albums, and is especially noticeable on the second part. Musically, what did you do to connect this album to the “Something Wicked This Way Comes” album?

There are specific themes–sometimes it could be a guitar or sitar melody, a vocal melody or even cello strings—it does happen throughout. Sometimes it comes through different keys or it is very subtle. There are definitely things that connect them together. There are actually three or four of those melodies. The one main one is what I call “Set’s Theme.” Darth Vader has his theme, this is Set’s theme. The cellos are playing it in the beginning on “Overture” and at the end on “Epilogue.” There are also some melodies from the original “Something Wicked” trilogy that find their way throughout both albums. For me, that’s the way you do it. It makes it hauntingly familiar and connects the whole thing. That was part of the plan from the gate.

One aspect I noticed of both albums is your use of various instruments. This one I hear bongos, violins, acoustic guitars, etc. Who handled all these instruments?

I did some of the stuff myself, and I created some of the stuff with this program called “Ethno Instrument” to create loops. It has actual guys playing all of these parts. I am so glad I bought that program because it has the perfect vibe. It is actually easier and it sounded better. I started collecting world instruments in 1999. I went to Australia with my mother and I bought a bunch of instruments from New Guinea and Australia. Some of these instruments didn’t sound very good, so we found better recordings of the same instruments that were already done. We would just loop them.

So part of it is with real instruments played by me; part of it is looped stuff that are samples from “Ethno,” it just kind of depends on which part specifically. There are didjeridu parts in there. When I wrote this, part of the plan was to have world instruments to give it that ancient earth culture feel. There is more of that on the unreleased tracks that will be on the box set.

Part one has more of that ancient world music vibe because of the storyline. Part two has more classical elements because it is more in the modern age. Yeah, we are talking about two thousand years ago, and there weren’t big symphonies back then, but it fits the theme of the story better and where it is going. The whole coronation, which is a piece that isn’t on part two right now but will be on the box set, is the sound of royalty when he gets the crown (the scepter). “Sacred Flames” has a very classical element to it, too. There are a couple little pieces that have the tribal segway vibe. I left those off because now there is a different vocalist, and the continuity is a little different. I think it will get to the point quicker going from song to song, but once we do the box set we have Matt re-track the vocals from “Framing” and we add in all the other segways, do the extras and the liner notes. With the extra text it will have, people will be able to sit down and absorb this whole thing. It will make a lot more sense when these two are connected together.

Please tell our readers about Matthew Barlow rejoining the band?

Well, it kind of happened out of the blue. It was not anything that was planned or talked about for a long time—it just happened. Things were not feeling right with Tim. He did an amazing job in the studio and I love the records he did with us, but on stage there was something missing. It was kind of a spiritual thing. In the history of the band, even before Matt was in the band, it was the first time I had felt that there was a problem on stage with the spirit, with the energy. I just think that Tim was more focused on his solo albums and not being dedicated to Iced Earth. I think the fans picked up on that, too. Even though he did some great stuff in the studio, it just didn’t feel right on stage. Change was coming, no matter what.

If Matt had not come back into the band, it would have been after part two. When I was in Europe, I heard about Matt doing the side project thing he was doing and thought he might be missing music. So when I got home from the tour, I called him and asked if he was missing it. He said he was, so I asked him if we should start something. Maybe we should put our heads together and start a new project. As we spoke and one thing led to another, it sounded like he could do ICED EARTH, so it didn’t really make sense for us to start something else. Really, from the time we spoke to forty-eight-hours later the decision was made. It felt right. I am really happy to have him back.

Like I said, I love what Tim did with us. I will always love those records. “The Glorious Burden” and “Framing” will always be at the top of my list for favorite ICED EARTH albums. I regret none of it. The recording part of ICED EARTH is one part, and the performing and live part is another part. It’s an important part and our live show has always been an intense and great feeling, with the exception of these last couple of years.

I remember reading something about Barlow saying he originally quit ICED EARTH to pursue a Criminal Justice degree. Did he complete his degree?

He never did the criminal justice degree, but he did go to the police academy and become a cop. It was the 911 thing; it shook us up pretty bad. I had considered dissolving ICED EARTH completely and joining the Navy to try and get into the Special Forces because that is what some very good friends of mine are into. There were some very good friends of mine that talked me out of it. They said I could help so much more by keeping ICED EARTH going. They said it gave them the will to carry on out in the field. It inspires so many of the guys. I took that to heart. It made Matt look at his life in a different way. He came to me and said he wanted to step down. I said, “Dude, you can’t do that. We have a brand. We are ending the shit with Century Media. SPV is right around the corner. We have a new deal coming. Everything is going to be cool. Everything is going to be a lot better.” He said ok and we started recording “The Glorious Burden” and it just wasn’t going well. Matt wasn’t his self. He wasn’t engaged. He was probably doing the best that he could at the time, but it just wasn’t working. Jim and I were getting increasingly frustrated. Jim said he thought we would be ok in the mix.

So, we went to Tampa and started mixing the record. I was pacing around the control room, scratching my head, thinking “this isn’t what it is supposed to be.” When we started on “Gettysburg” I decided to pull the plug. To me, the importance of “The Glorious Burden” album was huge. It was stuff that I cared deeply about. It was the pinnacle of my career as far as a writer. I didn’t want it to be released with vocals that aren’t conventional as they should be. Matt was not of the spirit of his past. Mentally, he was just not there, so I went back home and told him we tried but he was right. It just wasn’t working and it was best that we just split. Then I called Tim up to ask him if he would do it as a guest musician, so I could get the project done.

I’ve been a fan of Tim’s voice for years and have always wanted to work with him. We had even talked about doing a side project together. He came, he did it and shortly after doing the vocals we heard about the JUDAS PRIEST reunion with Halford. I told him he had a gig here if he wanted to do it. He said yeah, so that’s where we are at.

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