Your bottom 5 Iron Maiden albums

14. A Matter of Life and Death: Others here have noted that this album has much in common with X Factor, particularly the overall gloomy / dark mood to both music and lyrics. Some folks say this is a major reason while they like this album, but for me it has the opposite effect. There's some very good music on here, but I can only take 2-3 songs at a time before I want to hear something else.
15. The X Factor: Same rationale as AMALOD above, but the overall song quality & production isn't quite up to the same standards as AMALOD.
16. No Prayer for the Dying: I just straight up don't like this album. Particularly Bruce's vocals.
17. Fear of the Dark: Same rationale as NPFTD above, but more so.
 
13. No Prayer for the Dying: There's some good material here, so it was hard to put it this low in the ranking. I suppose it was down to there being nothing truly outstanding that gave it this spot in the end.
14. Piece of Mind: Like others, I'm not preferential to their "golden age." It of course has a few undeniable classics in the first half, and then a steep drop-off on the old Side B. To Tame a Land is cool, but it's still at the low end of Maiden epics.
15. The Final Frontier: An album that never truly connected with me, no matter how hard I try. Odd, since there are a few great songs here that stand well on their own--it's just the album as a whole always leaves me feeling very little. This is the opposite of PoM. A mostly weak Side A, followed by a stronger Side B.
16. Iron Maiden: Also like others here, I'm not partial to the Di'Anno era. Earlier in the thread, it was articulated perfectly in a way that hit home with me: this era isn't what I'm looking for when I feel like listening to Maiden.
17. Killers: Yet another vote for Killers at the bottom. It's a fine album, the production's better than the debut, and there are some decent songs. Sorry, Di'Anno. Great voice for a punkier-type singer, but punk was never my bag, baby.
 
Guess it will be something like this:

No prayer for the dying
Fear of the dark
Dance of death
Virtual XI
The final frontier

The last three are for sure, the first two are very even with Piece of mind, Brave new world, A matter of life and death and Senjutsu.
 
I actually like all Maiden albums, more or less, so my bottom 5 is meaningless to me.

Piece Of Mind/The Final Frontier
X Factor
Iron Maiden
No Prayer
Killers

I really like TXF, POM is classic, the debut is class, TFF has some strong stuff.
 
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Kalata said:
I actually like all Maiden albums
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I like them all too, even VXI at some level. I've been listening to most of them back the last week or so, I started with Piece of Mind and just ended up moving from there onwards and am up as far as AMOLAD now. I was surprised that I enjoyed Fear of the Dark much more than I was expecting to.
 
Senjutsu-up one
Fear-down one
X
Book
XI

Senjutsu is rising in it's older age and may yet escape this hell-hole.
Fear's ok in places but I have to adopt a forgiving mindset.
X is grim. Bruce's versions indicate what could've been.
Book's mostly the same stuff done worse.
XI, there's a whole other world out there!
 
A Matter of Life and Death
The X Factor
Senjutsu
Virtual XI

Nothing against Blaze... but against what Steve made of him.
TXF + AMOLAD: too little varied
Senjutsu: "Lost in a Lost World" :( but maybe it hasn't grown on me yet
 
13.A Matter of Life and Death
14.Killers
15.The Final Frontier
16.The X Factor
17.Virtual XI

I`m surprised how many times the debut shows up. I know the first 2 albums are very different not least because of Paul singing on them but to me song wise it is a very strong album.
 
I would say again dance of death. But lets talk about this order of albums.
1. No prayer for the dying 1990
2. Fear of the dark 1992
3. X factor 1995
4. Virtual xi 1998

4 albums in a row that were ( bad) for many people ( not me) i would like to see that on the 50 documental aniversary and the reunion.
 
Aside from 17, I like all of these albums and listen to them quite often.

17. Virtual XI - 2 ok songs (Futureal and The Clansman) and that's it. I listen to this maybe once a year to see if I like any more than the last time and I never do. Just not at all for me.
16. The Final Frontier - by far the weakest of the reunion era material
15. Brave New World - please repeat the chorus again, I didn't get it the first handful of times.
14. Fear of the Dark - widely inconsistent but the highs are amazing
13. No Prayer for the Dying - still dig it, despite it's flaws. Perhaps Maiden's last "fun" album.
 
Helmuth Von Moltke said:
jeez ... you really, really disliked the reunion era!
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Nope, I love BNW and AMOLAD.
I also love 'Starblind' from 'The Final Frontier and I think is a good record overall, but I consider 'The Alchemist' very generic, I always skip 'Satellite 15", I've never liked the chorus and pre-chorus in "The Isle of Avalon" and, although I love some parts of "The Man Who Would be King", the song is a little bit messy.
From "The Book of Souls" I like "If Eternity...", "The Red...", the title song and parts from "Empire of the Clouds", but I think this last song especially needed a better sound, like the entire album. "Senjutsu" sounds a little bit better, but I find the vocal melodies in "Senjutsu", "The Parchment" and "Death of the Celts" too repetitive and obvious.
 
eddie666 said:
Senjutsu is rising in it's older age and may yet escape this hell-hole.
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Well, as Maiden says themselves, Hell aint a bad place to be. I´d even take "Don´t you think I´m a saviour?" for an eternity quite happily.

Nothing too serious, but after pondering for about 20 minutes while listening to BBC-Prom and taking a sneaky look at a list from another Maiden forum of album ranking (updated last year incidentally), here´s mine with slight modifications and quick summary:

17. The Final Frontier - too mediocre material for a 75 minute album

16. The Book of Souls - identical reasoning except the material is slightly better

15. Virtual XI - not good enough to achieve higher position, but features two fantastic songs (predictably, The Clansman & Futureal) and also The Educated Fool is just fine

14. No Prayer For The Dying - gets way too much hate but admittedly the absolute superb tunes are missing which are the essence of Iron Maiden

13. Fear of the Dark - better sounding album than its predecessor and also there are some classics like Be Quick, Afraid and however tiresome, the title track

Honourable mention, number #12 would have been Brave New World. As half of it consists of VXI leftovers it can´t be much higher than VXI itself. Also, I think BNW is 2nd most overrated Maiden album after 7th Son, which is the most overrated.

Finally, some "fun" facts, or at least some facts nevertheless: my top-2 Maiden albums, Powerslave and Somewhere In Time, are the two I haven´t actually listened this year (most recent listen to both: November last year). Most recent album I´ve listened: A Matter of Life And Death a month ago on August 13th.
 
Álvaro said:
Nope, I love BNW and AMOLAD.
I also love 'Starblind' from 'The Final Frontier and I think is a good record overall, but I consider 'The Alchemist' very generic, I always skip 'Satellite 15", I've never liked the chorus and pre-chorus in "The Isle of Avalon" and, although I love some parts of "The Man Who Would be King", the song is a little bit messy.
From "The Book of Souls" I like "If Eternity...", "The Red...", the title song and parts from "Empire of the Clouds", but I think this last song especially needed a better sound, like the entire album. "Senjutsu" sounds a little bit better, but I find the vocal melodies in "Senjutsu", "The Parchment" and "Death of the Celts" too repetitive and obvious.
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I think many fans fully appreciate that the reunion albums, esp the last two, are so long that the inconsistent quality of the material is very obvious.

Whether this moves four of them to the bottom five of Maiden’s catalogue is a bold conclusion to draw from that inconsistency! But fair play to you for preferring the 90s albums, which not many fans would. You must be very forgiving regarding the inconsistent quality issues of the 90s albums, I guess.
 
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