The Book of Souls: General album discussion

I've given up trying to follow the discussions on sound.
Leak vs CD vs vinyl vs stereo system vs headphones vs EQ vs taste vs ears — it's become impossible to learn anything objective here.
 
The production is very clear on vinyl. @Gk1 I think that's band's intentional decision, to sound like something from 1970s, not exactly "metal" in today's context. Kevin does what Steve tells him to do.
Back on the rating topic, for me currently;

If Eternity Should Fail and Empire Of The Clouds - top. There's so much I love about these two tracks that I''ll restrain from commenting until I am ready to write a proper review.

The Great Unknown, The Book Of Souls, The Man Of Sorrows - great songs, instantly recognizable "reunion" style, no weak points but lacking "something special" that opener and closer have.
Speed Of Light, Tears Of A Clown, Death Or Glory, When The River Runs Deep Purple - good and pretty enjoyable tracks but IMHO some parts of each one could be better.

Shadows Of The Valley and The Red And The Black - bottom. SOTV: bad Wasted Years copycat intro. Boring and overused main riff. OK vocal melodies and nice performance by Bruce. Apart from first repetition of vocal melody, Jan's solo is just...let's say uninspired. It sounds like a scaling riff exercise for guitar starters. TRATB, great first minute, and that's it. It drags on and on, it's boring as hell, and the often praised instrumental section is so unremarkable and stretched beyond belief. This is, for my ears, definitely worst song of the album.
 
Oh well, I am just going through Maiden's and Bruce's discography and each time I get to a song from TBOS I instinctively feel like I need to play with the equalier.
 
Regarding the sound - for me it's a definite step up from The Final Frontier which was a muddy directionless mess regardless of what format you were using. The drums on that album were awful and the vocals sounded like they were recorded in a box somewhere with no polish at all. BOS may not get everything right but at least the vocals finally sound well produced for the first time since BNW.

At first I was against a track reorder here, but after reading complaints (from non-Maiden message board posters mind you) about there being too many long songs on this album, I kind of wonder if moving The Red and the Black elsewhere would have changed that perception? Because I think what this album gets right more than the last few is the mixing up of track lengths and feel. Makes listening to it more fun for me. But I do think that TRATB kind of kills that momentum that builds on the first part of disc one.
 
I don't know how many of you listened Vinyl rip but it's huge improvement over CD, there is lot more air in it, little bit scooped, bass is more open, guitar more in your face and drums are more present.
 
Donner said:
Regarding the sound - for me it's a definite step up from The Final Frontier which was a muddy directionless mess regardless of what format you were using. The drums on that album were awful and the vocals sounded like they were recorded in a box somewhere with no polish at all. BOS may not get everything right but at least the vocals finally sound well produced for the first time since BNW.

At first I was against a track reorder here, but after reading complaints (from non-Maiden message board posters mind you) about there being too many long songs on this album, I kind of wonder if moving The Red and the Black elsewhere would have changed that perception? Because I think what this album gets right more than the last few is the mixing up of track lengths and feel. Makes listening to it more fun for me. But I do think that TRATB kind of kills that momentum that builds on the first part of disc one.
Click to expand...

Completely agreed about TRATB!
Regarding post-1999 productions, my favourite is AMOLAD. Followed by a tie between TBOS and BNW. The latter maybe better-sounding, but it has an artificial feel, esp. with triggered drums. TFF's production I don't like, while DOD is the shit brick on the bottom.
 
I find it very difficult to rank this album. For me the top 3 are obvious (Empire of the Clouds, Shadows of the Valley, Tears of a Clown) as are the bottom 3 (The Book Of Souls, The Great Unknown, The Man Of Sorrows. ordering these is more difficult) but the other 5 are very difficult to put into any kind of order.

One thing that does stand out to me is how much If Eternity Should Fail has dropped. I'd probably have put it in my top 3 the first time round behind Empire and Tears but I'm not sure I'd give it a spot in even the top 5 anymore. Where other tracks have grown, it hasn't really gone anywhere. Still enjoyable and a great chorus but not as mind-blowing as I once thought it was.
 
I could have sworn we had a dedicated Maiden articles and interviews thread (other than the pre-TBOS news thread). May be time to start one.
 
Last edited:
After twenty or so listens, I must say that the album is good as it is... I like every song, more or less...

But if they'd released this album:

1. If Eternity Should Fail
2. Where the River Runs Deep
3. Shadows of the Valley
4. Speed of Light
5. The Red and the Black
6. Tears of the Clown
7. The Book of Souls

(maybe with The Great Unknown as a B-Side), it would not exceed an hour and I would award it 12/10. Seriously.
 
JudasMyGuide said:
After twenty or so listens, I must say that the album is good as it is... I like every song, more or less...

But if they'd released this album:

1. If Eternity Should Fail
2. Where the River Runs Deep
3. Shadows of the Valley
4. Speed of Light
5. The Red and the Black
6. Tears of the Clown
7. The Book of Souls

(maybe with The Great Unknown as a B-Side), it would not exceed an hour and I would award it 12/10. Seriously.
Click to expand...
The longer the better. Seriously, just make a playlist or burn a CD of those 7 songs and reward it 12/10.
 
blindg3 said:
The longer the better. Seriously, just make a playlist or burn a CD of those 7 songs and reward it 12/10.
Click to expand...

Travis The Dragon said:
Or skip the songs you don't like when listening.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying I dislike the rest. I do. But the album would work better as a whole to me. It would even have a somewhat better flow, IMHO.

If what you say was the case people shouldn't hate FOTD album, because you can skip Chains of Misery, The Apparition and Weekend Warrior and it would be instantly better, right? It seemed to me here on this forum we usually rate an album in its entirety. I'm used to listening to whole albums. You shouldn't have to make you own playlists out of albums, IMHO.

Again, it's not as if those other songs are bad, it's just that the perfection is distilled a tad ... instead of an album to end all albums from start to finish, it's "only" great.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top