Matt Barlow Quits Iced Earth. Again.

It seems that Iced Earth can't ever gain any momentum with the revolving door of singers lately. Matt Barlow has announced his intentions to leave Iced Earth again citing family this time. Which is a more relatable reason then last time when he decided to be Captain Homeland Security after the September 11th attacks.

Iced Earth will continue on though with another search for a singer. I doubt it will be Ripper Owens since he got screwed over yet again from an established band. All of this just seems to mirror Sabbath in the 80's with a rotating cast of characters fronting every album after Ozzy. Except Sabbath was already a legend by then. Iced Earth is still scrambling for some legitimacy 20+ years after they debuted.And this kind of stuff doesn't help. Stay tuned as this plays out through the year though I really think IE should just fold.

Iced Earth has discovered Facebook, Still Delusional

There are tons of bands that have Facebook fan pages. From the super popular to the newcomers. Facebook has been the place where bands can truly interact with fans unlike Myspace which became a clusterfuck of graphics and music samples.According to Blabbermouth today Jon Schaffer, the "mastermind" behind Iced Earth, just figured out Facebook's usage for his band this year. Here is the block quote from the article:

"When we launched Minions of the Wicked," Schaffer said, "the real power and usefulness of social-network sites like Facebook was unknown to us. Everyone knew about MySpace. Practically every band was already there. Twitter was more or less still in its infancy. Consequently, very few bands used it. Facebook existed, of course. But it was a big question mark. How could bands like ours use Facebook to keep in touch with fans?"

He continued: "On September 1st of this year, we launched the official Iced Earth Facebook page. We had no idea what would happen. All we knew is that other bands were on Facebook, and hundreds of fans requested that we be on it as well. So we asked our publicist, Bill Murphy, to create the official ICED EARTH Facebook page for us with one stipulation: That he be as passionate about it as he is about our music. He was. And we were blown away by the response we got. In two months' time, we added over 6,400 followers. Over six thousand four hundred! And it grows by nearly 100 per day. In Facebook, we found the perfect way for us to talk to fans, and — more importantly — to hear from them. In real time. We were thrilled."

My reactions after the jump.