ASH JONES prompts guitarist JON SCHAFFER of visionary metallers ICED EARTH to let her in on the parallels between their album Framing Armageddon and the real world.

Iced Earth enjoyed some fortunate circumstances while recording their new concept album, Framing Armageddon: Something Wicked Part 1– they had the time and funds at Jon Schaffer’s personal studio to nail down the intricacies of the sci-fi album. In previous years, budget meant the Indiana band had to be quick in with the drums, guitars and vocals, record, and then pack up for the year. Now, nearly ten years since Schaffer debuted the heroic story – better known to fans as the Something Wicked trilogy – on 1998’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, the story is properly unleashed on the new studio album. Thus it is with enthusiasm that Schaffer starts the interview by recounting the luxury of messing around with guitar tones for the 19 track epic.

“This time I was trying out many different guitars. I was trying out the same guitars with different pick-ups, sometimes different combinations of amplifiers or speaker cabinets. It’s a big album, a big story, and I knew it was really important to have a lot of different flavours in the guitars.” 

Add to that gleaming vocals, stunning guitar passages, intermittent slick instrumentals and time-perfect drums, and you can get an idea of what Framing Armageddon sounds like.

“The first song, Something Wicked Part 1, is kind of an overview of the prophecy, of where we are at that point in the story. It discusses the fact that there is going to be a human invasion of the Setian’s planet and they’re going to be wiped out and they have to accept it and they have to realise that this is their fate. They have to follow what the Elders are going to do to lead them, in order to get retribution.”

Not only do the methods in which the Setians and mankind fight for earth create rich storytelling, the events are reminiscent of real world history. Even more allegorically-laced, however, is the actual message behind the fiction. The lyrical content demonstrates the habitual ways in which humans abuse institutions like war and religion.

“The coolest thing about the Something Wicked universe is you can take anything in human history and work it into the very nature and design of my story. That’s what’s so great about it and that’s why it has unlimited storytelling potential. You can go into a story about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and you can take that and put it into the Something Wicked universe and make a very cool science fiction story that is based on history.

“Mankind has been pretty rotten throughout history but individuals hold power. It’s easy to sit back and blame other people for your weaknesses and your shortcomings, and the hard thing to do is to look yourself in the mirror and say, ‘I need to be responsible for my bullshit and take responsibility for my actions,’ and if more people would do that I think we would live in a much better world. Every individual holds a huge amount of power. It’s just a matter of choice.”

FRAMING ARMAGEDDON: SOMETHING WICKED PART 1 is available now through Steamhammer/SPV/Riot.

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