Deconstructing Eddie: My Iron Maiden Songs & Albums Countdown: #94-91
It's been a while, so I saw it fit to drop these four songs in one go. I don't think most of you refer to the YouTube links, but I'll fill them in when I get home
94. The Educated Fool (Virtual XI)
"Do you really want to be just another statistic"
It’s one of those songs that stretches the "Hey let’s repeat this part over and over!" approach too far, but considering that it’s in an album with much worse cases of this, one doesn’t notice it too much. Actually, that’s the problem here: One doesn’t notice it too much. It feels like an outtake from
The X Factor. It’s exactly the type of thing that simply gets lost when placed in a compilation with most of the band’s songs. Nothing about it stands out; but when focused on and picked apart, it’s really not bad at all. The only thing that makes it forgettable is that it sounds too much like a combination of a lot of familiar elements from much better Iron Maiden tracks. It features good dynamics, musical interplay, has decent lyrics and even has some flashes of brilliance from Blaze.
93. The Edge of Darkness (The X Factor)
"They brought it up just like room service"
Thing that I disliked the most is that the song was based on
Apocalypse Now and it indeed screamed that
"Hey, this song is based on Apocalypse Now!!!" It does an excellent job capturing the feelings that I felt it wanted to capture: darkness, emptiness, and even a bit of madness. But its influence simply felt forced and too in-your-face. The helicopter sounds at the beginning and end, plus directly using lines from the film (that weren’t exactly lyrically apt) made the track desperately lacking in subtlety. The meat of the song though (after you get through that slowly escalating "atmospheric" opening) is a juicy, delectable and enjoyable affair with exceptional riffing that does a lot to complement the song’s morose and gloomy vibe.
92. Tailgunner (No Prayer for the Dying)
"Nail that Fokker kill that son"
My impression is that a lot of people really dislike this song. Why that’s so is something I really can’t get. It does seem like the bastard younger brother of "Aces High" in that tackles the same theme in a more raw, less polished manner. Not to mention that "Aces High" was a tough act to follow and this one unfortunately features Bruce’s 90s vocal style. Having said that, this track still features a great deal of dual harmonies and classic-era melodies to complement the galloping bass riff and breakneck pace. Just change the vocal style and it could easily be mistaken for an 80s track. The chorus is pretty bad; but overall, this is a decent song and one that perfectly fills its role as sort of the "transition" into 90s-era Maiden.
91. No More Lies (Dance of Death)
"A hurried time, no disgrace"
I’m really curious what type of effects were used for that distorted rhythm guitar (the one on the left channel) that was used for this track because I’m not a big fan of the tone. It doesn’t grate too much on the chorus since it’s masked by the drum pattern that it mimics. On the verses though, it sounds really awful. I would have preferred a smoother, fatter type of distortion.
Besides that bit of nitpicking, I’m not a big fan of the use of synths, the soft intro and the instrumental. But having said that, "No More Lies" has little going against it even though it doesn’t have a lot of highlights. And I’m not even complaining about the chorus, which is usually the point of attack for most of this song’s critics. There may have been several repetitions too many towards the end, but I think the chorus is quite powerful and fits well within the scheme of the song. Especially considering the equally strong pre-chorus that does a great job of building up to it, the chorus sounds really good.
The countdown is back.
I was pretty sure that TEoD is very well received while Tailgunner is the exact opposite here.