When people talk about Iced Earth they usually mention albums like Something Wicked This Way Comes or maybe The Glorious Burden and of course the focus these days are on the Something Wicked 1 and 2 albums that are out now.

One album that seems to receive the preverbal back burner when it comes to the Iced Earth catalog in terms of respect or discussion, is their 2nd album Night Of The Stormrider. I don’t know why, maybe because it doesn’t feature Barlow or Owens or maybe that fans are so devoted to Barlow they don’t know that Iced Earth made 2 albums before Barlow joined.

Regardless of the reason, Night Of The Stormrider is that type of album that needs to be listened to because of the shear intensity and thrashiness, due to the heavy riffing and John Greely’s intense vocals. Greely would only appear on this album, as he was fired from Iced Earth, thus paving the way for Barlow to join. But this one time he appeared, he makes a very impressive debut. Greely has the agressivness of Barlow and the range of Tim Owens. He has an angry intensity to his voice at the same time, he can belt those high notes like crazy.

The album is a concept story dealing with a man betrayed by his religious brethren than goes on a rampage, destroying everything in his path before his demise, which leads him straight to hell. First track begins with Angels Holocaust, which starts of with a choir chant before a short acoustic slowness to the song ,than Greely belts out a falsetto note that pierces the ears. He would do this one more time before the song goes into full thrash overdrive.

Stormrider is next with no pause. We have a full thrasher here as Schaffer and Randy Sawver chug the riffs like crazy and Greely becomes aggressive with his vocals. The thrash riffs and aggression continues with The Path I Choose. Here Greely shows of his vocal power both in anger and intensity like crazy. He switches to almost death metal vox to high falsetto.

Before The Vision is a short ballad with Greely in mid range. No anger here in fact this should showcase how much a diversified vocalist he was. Mystical End comes up once again showcasing Greely’s range and aggression. Although not much of a thrasher than the other songs before it, with Greely throwing his range out there more than makes up for it. Desert Rain and Pure Evil go back to full on thrash assault . Both songs tip over 6 minutes with the latter showcasing Greely’s falsetto range like crazy. And at this point if you weren’t impressed with this album than I guess nothing will.

One more short ballad, Reaching The End and we get into the final song which is the epic Travel In Stygian. Over 9 minutes in length this powerhouse epic is perhaps Iced Earth’s best epic song of all. Why you ask, well here Greely goes all out through and through. I’m telling you it’s a shame that he got fired because throughout he delivered a pretty impressive vocal performance. And add that to excellent drumming and perfect riffing from Schaffer and company well you have a makings of a classic right here.

This is one underrated album to say the least. Why I don’t know maybe people are afraid that is would suck because Iced Earth’s first album didn’t impress much including me but I will tell you this album is worth getting. No it doesn’t have Matt Barlow or Tim Owens but it sure has one heck of an impressive vocalist in John Greely IMHO.