I think you are right on the money, though I don't find "formulaic" something negative.
Yep. I mean, to most casuals, Maiden between 1980-1992 sounds roughly the same, as does the reunion material. The differences are more obvious to us more avid fans, as we view Maiden from a different, perhaps more detail-oriented perspective. And in there, the differences and variations are magnified.
The backwards guitar solo on “The Man Who Would Be King” begs to differ IMO.
Like you said, Maiden's music may seem formulaic too, but when you dive in to the stuff or scrape thing a little, you can see that they try to explore different styles.
It's funny I've seen this a lot before but I really feel TFF is one of the more unique albums of the reunion era. It's true that it feels like a straight continuation of AMOLAD, more than any other pair of Maiden albums outside maybe SIT to SSOASS or the first two albums, but despite nearly every song being a rehash of the framework of a previous song (usually on AMOLAD), I think they innovated a bit within those frameworks. The backwards guitar solo on Man Who Would Be King is a good example, or just having a proggy Murray epic in general is kinda unusual. Both Starblind and Isle of Avalon (the latter especially) feel unlike anything Maiden had done before, with Avalon in particular being the closest the band gets to approaching straight up progressive rock. Obviously Satellite 15 is kind of its own thing. Even songs like El Dorado and The Alchemist feel like the band recapturing their 80s energy in a way that we hadn't really heard during the reunion era up until that point.
Great post. I’m in the proTFF camp. There are some really interesting songs on there and they were trying some new ideas. I think it is a shame that Adrian said in an interview that he went back to writing shorter songs after the slightly negative press TFF got (citation needed).
^This is news to me. I thought it's because he prefers to write shorter songs in general.
I think the best way to say it is: Maiden's music is more involving and more interesting. Also - details, playing, ideas. Important stuff, as @Starblind said. Formulatic? The slow intros/outros, yes. It's not a negative thing. But Reunion era is so different from the 80's era and early 90's era, so it's good.
True that. DOD and TFF probably the most, while BNW and TBOS probably combine the most from all eras. What works, style, but not more of the same (in general) like some other bands. Maiden combine their sounds (more or less) well enough since 2000. The band evolved.
So not the songs in the 80's, I beg to differ. It's always about the material more than the sound. The Reunion albums also have enough distinctive sonic identities.
Found it!
Funnily enough AMOLAD already started that trend. Thousand Suns features 7s prominently and the main riff for Different World was originally written in 7/8 before they changed it to the 4/4 riff we know now.Found it!
‘I think on the last album [Final Frontier] I brought in a lot of ‘strange’ time signatures, a lot of sevens. To be honest, we didn’t really embrace it like I thought we would. I don’t think it really gelled’.
Adrian Smith on Iron Maiden's new album The Book Of Souls
The guitarist and songwriter on the metal legends' latestwww.musicradar.com
I've interpreted that and some of his other comments around this time less about the audience reception and more about the raw production and loose recording style on TFF. It's also well documented that he wanted to add more reverb and such to those songs. His songs on the last two Maiden albums seem to be more straightforward and not in as much need of polished production.Found it!
‘I think on the last album [Final Frontier] I brought in a lot of ‘strange’ time signatures, a lot of sevens. To be honest, we didn’t really embrace it like I thought we would. I don’t think it really gelled’.
Adrian Smith on Iron Maiden's new album The Book Of Souls
The guitarist and songwriter on the metal legends' latest
I had long suspected this but never saw it confirmed anywhere. Do you know if this was done in the original sessions or later on? WotW sounds so much better than the rest of the album that I have wondered if it was revisited sometime during the period when the album had been locked in the vault and touched up later on perhaps when it was time to prep it for a lead single release.
Thanks for sharing this interesting interview. But I think Adrian is referring to his own opinion about his ''strange'' ideas for this album and that it's odd even for Reunion ''prog'' Maiden. Plus he wanted a different production for it. He had said that he always try do something new on each album, which is great. It's interesting that he had around 12 songs for TBOS album (he co-wrote 9 songs for the last 2 albums) and that he thought they would write more shorter songs for it for the needed balance. Also, most of his solos are spontaneous, which you wouldn't normally say. Playing with sounds outside of Maiden probably helped him.Found it!
‘I think on the last album [Final Frontier] I brought in a lot of ‘strange’ time signatures, a lot of sevens. To be honest, we didn’t really embrace it like I thought we would. I don’t think it really gelled’.
Adrian Smith on Iron Maiden's new album The Book Of Souls
The guitarist and songwriter on the metal legends' latest
blabbermouth.net
This.
Actually, Bruce and H tend to work quickly because Adrian usually serves Bruce an almost complete demo with the title. Bruce takes the title and writes the lyrics and vocal melodies.
I definitely agree on this. When I heard WOTW for the first time, I felt Senjutsu was gonna be the next, well produced album since AMOLAD & then I heard the Stratego and I was like dream on.