With the success of their new Facebook page, ICED EARTH have announced the demise of the band's fan club, Minions Of The Wicked.

Says Jon Schaffer, "When we launched Minions of the Wicked, 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?

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.

With the world's economy in such rough shape, and people having to scrape together their hard-earned money to buy basic necessities, we thought we could best serve our fans by giving them communication, interaction, access to the band, fun giveaways, and exclusive news on Facebook, without charging them a dime.

I'm honored that the fan-club members chose to support Iced Earth. I will always be grateful to them for their loyalty to us," said Schaffer. "In return, I want to give them what they asked for when we started the fan club. Only this time, it's free."

Visit Iced Earth's Facebook page at this location.

A previous update from the band states: "We've just made available two FREE blistering live tracks from the forthcoming Iced Earth DVD, Festivals Of The Wicked, to be released in early 2011. Click here and we'll tell you how to obtain them."

The soon-to-be-released DVD, Festivals Of The Wicked, features full-length concerts from Wacken, 2007 (with Tim “Ripper” Owens on lead vocals), Metal Camp and Rock Hard, 2008 (with Matt Barlow on lead vocals), a rockin’ road movie, a long interview with Jon Schaffer, and more.

Stay tuned for further updates.