Big mistake to go back to the Something Wicked concept which seemed to kill the momentum they had, plus all of Jon's passive aggressive statements about Ripper.
But that was Jon's masterplan all along, do the Something Wicked album and have it the best thing he's done in his carrer. He didn't do it after the actual Something Wicked album because he knew that it would be their last with Century Media and so he did Horror Show, and then he did The Glorious Burden as a "test" to see how the new label would promote a regular album. So he did the album he wanted when he wanted to do it, too bad it turned out a bloated affair over two albums and two singers. I remember reading years later that by those times he had losses in the family so that surely influenced his creativity but the Something Wicked saga should have been a single album with the best songs, and one singer of course.
Also, having a kickass trilogy and two albums *entirely* devoted to Set Abominae hell bent on wiping mankind off the Earth and at the very last song (as beautiful as it is) saying "nah, guess I won't do it" was underwhelming to say the least.
He must even had toyed around with the storyline - back on the old Iced Earth site he was giving long and detailed reports on the band's activities (that's why I remember what I posted above), and I could swear that one of the titles of the SW album was "Come What May (Mankind is Lost)". The subtitle of course disappear, I wonder if he changed his mind about how the story would go.