I’ve never really been an Iced Earth fan. Which is why, despite a ton of e-mails from Iced fans who were sad that Matt Barlow recently announced he is leaving the band for the second time (following their European tour this summer), I did not write anything about it. I had nothing to say. Sorry.

I am, however, a huge fan of Into Eternity. So I guess now that their singer, Stu Block, is the new front man for Iced Earth, I’ll have to start paying attention to both bands. Actually, the last time I saw Into Eternity live, they were opening for Iced Earth, so, yeah, this makes sense I suppose.

While Into Eternity just announced a new drummer last week, we still have no idea when the band will release another new album — it’s been three years since 2008′s The Incurable Tragedy. But I’m glad Block found a gig to occupy his time while Into Eternity guitarist/primary songwriter Tim Roth completes filming his lead role on the Fox series Lie to Me.

In case you’re not familiar with Block’s glass-breaking vocals, after the jump is the video for Into Eternity’s “Severe Emotional Distress.” You should really just know this song anyway, ’cause it rules.

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Allow me to begin by stating unequivocally that I am a Matt Barlow fan. I know there are plenty of Iced Earth devotees out there who were (rightfully) upset by Tim “Ripper” Owens’ unceremonious dismissal and felt he was a stronger vocalist for this act as they moved onward after Barlow, who struggling with his allegiances earlier this decade involving his love of Country, dropped out to take up law enforcement. But Barlow is family (he’s married to guitarist Jon Schaffer’s sister) and, I believe, he’s the more dynamic singer. His emotive wail often resembles Fates Warning’s Ray Alder. His subdued baritone comes close to Queensrÿche’s Geoff Tate. He can also reach the searing, Halfordesque heights Owens is known for though he tends to use them more sparingly. And then he has that snarling growl which is entirely his own. Beyond that he’s much more of a performer who falls into and maintains a character the way an actor might. I don’t dislike “Ripper” Owens but he doesn’t seem to embody the people about whom or situations about which he’s intoning quite as well as Barlow. Also, in a live setting he doesn’t really possess the energy one might want out of a frontman. He has an amazing voice that served the last couple Iced Earth releases well but I’m more a fan of the band’s earlier output, such as ’95′s Burnt Offerings and ’96′s The Dark Saga.

Enough with the diplomacy, though. You’re either going to dismiss this review based on my own stated preference or you’re going to hang in there with me for a spell. The Crucible of Man: Something Wicked Part 2 ends up a vital return for Barlow that, while it may fall short of Iced Earth’s classic material ends up more satisfying than its Part 1 predecessor.

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At the risk of sounding condescending to a dude who got to fulfill his childhood dream of recording and touring with his favorite metal band of all time and had his life bastardized and turned into a really shitty movie starring an Oscar nominee and a sitcom star, I gotta say: I feel really bad for Tim “Ripper” Owens.

I mean, things seemed to be going so well for Iced Earth: their latest album, Framing Armageddon: Something Wicked was getting rave reviews, it was selling surprisingly well, and while the video for the lead single, “Ten Thousand Strong,” is just about the silliest, cheapest piece of dung I’ve ever seen (see below), Headbanger’s Ball showed it at least three weeks in a row, which is really all the success you can wish for for a metal video these days.

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