Feel free to express your opinion ^^
A Matter of Life and Death >
The Final Frontier >
Brave New World >
Dance of Death
but sometimes:
A Matter of Life and Death > Brave New World >
The Final Frontier >
Dance of Death
The following may sound like hard criticism, but instead of only focusing on what is great on the newer albums (e.g. Ghost of the Navigator, Brave New World, Dance of Death, Paschendale, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, Lord of Light, Isle of Avalon) I will also focus on the opposite: the lesser aspects. I am not deaf for these aspects, so I need to take them with me.
I feel that Maiden needs to re-evaluate themselves a bit. Maybe, after all, it
is good they are taking so long for a new record. Yes, I am worried that they wait too long because they might not
have long (rather two new albums than one), but on the other hand, they need to kick themselves under their asses and focus on fresh, less predictable material.
The second half in
Brave New World contains some songs with unoriginality (The Nomad) and repetition (Silent Planet and The Thin Line).
Dance of Death suffers from the same but its impact is worse. There's really some tedious sameness and repetitiousness going on (No More Lies: a very predictable song, Face in the Sand; great intro but then....
). Add a few uninspired and bad vocal melodies (choruses in Wildest Dreams, Face in the Sand & No More Lies) on top and here you have Maiden's least good album, of about the same level as
Virtual XI.
The Final Frontier and
A Matter of Life and Death are better but also suffer from unoriginality (Wild Wind) and dragging moments (The Longest Day). And
The Final Frontier has The Talisman with its old man (intro) and apeman (couplets and choruses) vocal melodies. I found the vocals so shocking when I first heard it. How on earth could they have approved this, and even played it live, instead of the wonderful, adventurous epic called Isle of Avalon? Maiden did try some new things on the Final Frontier (The Man Who Should Be King) but they were not shockingly good, and a bit too lengthy (Satellite). Starblind had fabulous melodies but the main one is an echo to a segment in Don't Look to the Eyes of a Stranger. Also important, the song does not have enough musical substance for its length, to be called phenomenal. There are the lyrics of course. But hey, these are songs. Let people get high from Bruce doing an a cappella version in his bathroom, or in the mines of Moria if you like ;-) ....but one of the things I especially like in Maiden is their musical variety and changes in songs of such length. Yes I hear all the textures that Adrian weaves through the song, but I am talking about the bones of the song, the main structure. E.g. there is this constant tempo, and there's constantly the same mood, nine minutes long.
Still, I rank two of these newer albums higher than
The Number of the Beast and
Fear of the Dark. And that says something. I like
Fear of the Dark: an original, atmospherical album and a stylechanger for Maiden (Fear of the Dark and Afraid to Shoot Strangers were blueprints for many works to come).
There are days that I find one of them (AMOLAD) even better than
Piece of Mind,
Killers and
Iron Maiden.
But none of them can top
The X-Factor, which is essentially for me the best of the last seven albums (better than its predecessor and better than everything that followed).
The X-Factor has brilliant moments, it has a big bunch of strong songs, but it has less moments to be annoyed about, compared to newer Maiden albums. And here we arrive at my whole point.
I feel that the biggest number of moments that are less enjoyable are to be found on the newer Maiden albums. The older albums had the odd bad song (not for me: apart from material from
Virtual XI, I don't really have them to be honest), but that could have to do with less principle forms of taste. Maiden can't please anybody, but they
can take into account with controllable aspects such as:
Originality:
"Haven't we done this before, Steve?"
Repetition and monotony:
"Steve, we've talked about this before. This is a song of 8 or even 9 minutes. I feel it needs a change in tone or speed or else it starts dragging too much."
I admit that after 15 albums it's difficult to stay original. I just hope they find a way to be sharp, with a renewed critical look, also on their past.
Paying attention to repetition in songs is certainly possible.