Matt Barlow — born in the United States in 1971 — is Iced Earth's classic singer, in the band across two periods: from 1994 to 2003 and from 2007 to 2011. His voice is why the albums of that period work. Iced Earth is built on mechanical, repetitive picking riffs — a powerful device, but one that needs a counterweight. Barlow provides that counterweight with a deep, projected baritone able to sustain long notes, and shifts to a rasped register when the material demands. It is dramatic singing in the literal sense: the albums are conceptual and he plays characters. He was on The Dark Saga (1996), based on the comic Spawn, on Something Wicked This Way Comes (1998), on Horror Show (2001) — whose tracks each treat a classic figure of horror — and on The Glorious Burden (2004), which includes a thirty-minute suite about the Battle of Gettysburg. He left the band in 2003 and pursued a career outside music, in public safety. He returned in 2007 to record two more albums and left again in 2011.
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