Black Wizard
Pleb Hunter
2 Minutes to Midnight getting voted out is a disgrace.
ADRIAN SMITH SURVIVOR 2013, PART 2: Results -> The Evil That Men Do wins!
- Thread starter Night Prowler
- Start date
Forostar
Ancient Mariner
The Longest Day:
The good: The song has a great suspenseful build-up. I love those well chosen words and performance, helping to imagine the idea of a soldier approaching the coastline in a vessel, and the horrible entrance on the beach.
The bad: I don't find the instrumental part exciting, and like in FTGGOG I am not the biggest fan of these kind of 3/4 harmonies, which remind me a bit (too much) of Blood Brothers. Actually, that harmony I've seen people raving about is dragging the song down for me. It tears up the excitement and removes the dirt instantly. In my ears it's not only a light(hearted) and clean moment, but also a joyful one and sweet, and in my humble opinion it's even a soft and poppy passage as well. It spoils the tension, and it rather sounds like the soldiers take a break from the battle and have an unworried shower all of a sudden. The chorus drags.
Worst of all songs that are left, easily.
The good: The song has a great suspenseful build-up. I love those well chosen words and performance, helping to imagine the idea of a soldier approaching the coastline in a vessel, and the horrible entrance on the beach.
The bad: I don't find the instrumental part exciting, and like in FTGGOG I am not the biggest fan of these kind of 3/4 harmonies, which remind me a bit (too much) of Blood Brothers. Actually, that harmony I've seen people raving about is dragging the song down for me. It tears up the excitement and removes the dirt instantly. In my ears it's not only a light(hearted) and clean moment, but also a joyful one and sweet, and in my humble opinion it's even a soft and poppy passage as well. It spoils the tension, and it rather sounds like the soldiers take a break from the battle and have an unworried shower all of a sudden. The chorus drags.
Worst of all songs that are left, easily.
So I went back and listened to The Longest Day just now. It really has the potential to be a top ten song, but after getting the Steve Harris Treatment it loses a lot of its charm.
The first verse and prechorus are awesome. Very suspenseful buildup. The problem is that it builds to a dull, repetitive chorus. Which wouldn't be too bad if the chorus didn't repeat itself a bajillion times. Then after the chorus, it just goes back to the beginning of the song, which doesn't make any sense. The song already built itself up, it should go somewhere else. Instead we get a generic verse-prechorus-chorus-repeat structure. By the time that chorus comes back again I want to turn the song off.
The instrumental section almost comes in and saves the day. It really is perfect IMO. Here's where I disagree with Foro, very exciting, very heavy, suspenseful. Great drums. The entire band emulates a machine gun at times. It's awesome. I definitely disagree with the "joyful and sweet" and "soft and poppy" descriptions. I find those parts to be quite dramatic. Not to mention classic leads. Very interesting harmonically too, they utilized 3 guitars well here. But then after the awesome instrumental, what do we get? Another round of repeating choruses. Lame.
If I had my way, the song would've been structured like this (parts in bold would be new parts):
Intro Verse
Pre-chorus
Bridge
New Verse (different riff)
Pre-chorus
Chorus (repeated once max)
Instrumental
Bridge 2
Chorus
Outro
Similar length, less repetition, more interesting and unique parts to compensate.
The first verse and prechorus are awesome. Very suspenseful buildup. The problem is that it builds to a dull, repetitive chorus. Which wouldn't be too bad if the chorus didn't repeat itself a bajillion times. Then after the chorus, it just goes back to the beginning of the song, which doesn't make any sense. The song already built itself up, it should go somewhere else. Instead we get a generic verse-prechorus-chorus-repeat structure. By the time that chorus comes back again I want to turn the song off.
The instrumental section almost comes in and saves the day. It really is perfect IMO. Here's where I disagree with Foro, very exciting, very heavy, suspenseful. Great drums. The entire band emulates a machine gun at times. It's awesome. I definitely disagree with the "joyful and sweet" and "soft and poppy" descriptions. I find those parts to be quite dramatic. Not to mention classic leads. Very interesting harmonically too, they utilized 3 guitars well here. But then after the awesome instrumental, what do we get? Another round of repeating choruses. Lame.
If I had my way, the song would've been structured like this (parts in bold would be new parts):
Intro Verse
Pre-chorus
Bridge
New Verse (different riff)
Pre-chorus
Chorus (repeated once max)
Instrumental
Bridge 2
Chorus
Outro
Similar length, less repetition, more interesting and unique parts to compensate.
MrKnickerbocker
clap hands
2 Minutes to Midnight getting voted out is a disgrace.
Absolutely. I cannot even fathom this taking a bullet so soon. Classic Maiden.
Cosmiceddie
Back From The Edge
Let's face it, 'The Prisoner', 'The Longest Day' and 'Brighter Than A Thousand Suns' are top ten material, aren't they?
Moon Child
Ancient Mariner
The Prisoner, most definitely. If I had to pick between Longest and Brighter being in the top 10, I'd go with Brighter.
Forostar
Ancient Mariner
Prisoner and Longest Day: no way. Brighter would be in my top 3.
Saapanael
Ancient Mariner
Saapanael
Ancient Mariner
Oh.
The Flash
Dennis Wilcock did 9/11
Brighter Than a Thousand Suns is in my Top 10, The Prisoner is close, The Longest Day is in 30s.
Forostar
Ancient Mariner
But I use that list as a guideline indeed. It's full of Harris but you can filter some Adrian out of it.
Crimson Idol
Caveman
The chorus in longest day put me off the song for a very long time, it only really clicked for me a year or so ago. Excluding the chorus I think the lyrics are some of the best - if not the best - that Maiden have done, it's just a shame about that chorus. I can kind of see where Foro is coming from in the harmony sounding a bit too 'happy'. It's still a good song imo though and I would put it ahead of many of these due to the imagery that it provokes, the intro sounds just like it's being played over the noise of a landing craft's engine to me.
Prisoner and Icarus are two of my favourite early songs, whereas 2MtM possibly suffers from overplay. It's a decent song but I don't think it's one of the best.
Prisoner and Icarus are two of my favourite early songs, whereas 2MtM possibly suffers from overplay. It's a decent song but I don't think it's one of the best.