Book of Souls Theme

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Nomad
Is The Book of Souls kind of a concept album? Not like Operation Mindcrime or SSoASS, but a concept album in the same way Keeper of The Seven Keys is?

The band has mentioned the Mayan theme to the album, which can obviously be see in the artwork. The most obvious songs that go with the theme are the title track and If Eternity Should Fail. I'm wondering if they planned ahead to have a kind of theme to the album. And I realize it's not actually a concept album, but are there any other songs relating to the Book of Souls/Mayan theme?

(As a side note, I think it would have been really cool if they had made a concept album based on Steve Alten's 'Domain' trilogy. Just sayin'.)
 
If you really squint I could see making the case for If Eternity Should Fail, The Great Unknown, the Book of Souls and Shadows of the Valley being thematically linked. However, you can't shoe-horn The Red and the Black, Death or Glory, Empire of the Clouds and Tears of a Clown, for example, into that story.
 
I had a weird thought
First CD songs are actually (or better, alegorically) about their history

Eternity is about the time they appeared on the scene ("When the world was virgin"), and their resolution to change the world of music and possibly last till the ending of time :D
Speed of light is the time of their highest success, the link with the song title is self explanatory
The great unknown is the beginning of 90's when the time was changing and their kind of music went down in popularity, but they went on ("When the world has fallen and we stand alone..."), even without Bruce
Red & Black is about the Blaze years and the times of struggle, ups and downs, the bets and decisions they had to take ("How many chances can anyone have?"). The parallel with Angel & Gambler (which was of course created at this time) is also very obvious
Rivers is evidently about the "post-reunion" times (including now), when they have nothing more to prove to anyone and can do whatever they choose to (someone already mentioned that in that song's thread)

Book of Souls is actually the first song of the "new era" and of course all of the disc 2 songs are about their favourite topics (until I also find some more concepts in them that is ::) )

I know all of the above mentioned songs are also about something else, but they fit nicely in this admittedly very loose concept :D
 
There's some sense in the idea of the album relating to Maiden's history, especially with little references dropped in about Maiden's past, eg referring to a 'sea of madness' in Shadows of the Valley, and the Wasted Years-like intro from the same song. Plus the Speed of Light video referencing Maiden's history. And someone recently pointed out that Empire ends with 'came to die in France'. Supposing this did turn out to be their last album, then Maiden will have recorded their final album in France. Although I think that's far from decided at this stage. ;) The feel of the first disc, in my opinion, is quite different to that of the second.

I did have some other thoughts recently, though, I'll go into it a bit more later....like when I get out of work.
 
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And, as I pointed out somewhere else on this forum, Robin Williams, although historically a depression sufferer, was in fact struggling to deal with a (rare, as it turns out) form of dementia; that's not a joke btw.

The link to the ageing members of the band should be obvious. I'm not sure if this is a joke either...
 
CriedWhenBrucieLeft said:
And, as I pointed out somewhere else on this forum, Robin Williams, although historically a depression sufferer, was in fact struggling to deal with a (rare, as it turns out) form of dementia; that's not a joke btw.

The link to the ageing members of the band should be obvious. I'm not sure if this is a joke either...
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Well, they did forget about the 90's... mostly :p
 
CriedWhenBrucieLeft said:
And seem to want us to forget about them too.
Click to expand...

Well, at least it's not as bad as Black Sabbath. No mention of any non-Ozzy albums in their discography on their official site and the only thing the history section says about the non Ozzy era is:

"Black Sabbath persevered through a succession of lineup changes that sometimes did and sometimes didn’t include Butler and Ward. Several of Black Sabbath’s post-Osbourne albums - especially Heaven and Hell (1980), Mob Rules (1981) and Headless Cross (1989) - are highly regarded by hardcore fans. But when all was said and done, the classic lineup could not be bested."
 
SixesAlltheway said:
"Black Sabbath persevered through a succession of lineup changes that sometimes did and sometimes didn’t include Butler and Ward. Several of Black Sabbath’s post-Osbourne albums - especially Heaven and Hell (1980), Mob Rules (1981) and Headless Cross (1989) - are highly regarded by hardcore fans. But when all was said and done, the classic lineup could not be bested."
Click to expand...

Hehe.. Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules highly regarded by hardcore fans? Surely those two, and in particular Heaven and Hell, are highly regarded by pretty much every one.
 
Yeah, but ever since Ozzy returned to Sabbath they've pretty much tried to obliterate any other era than Ozzy-era Sabbath. At least when it comes to Maiden, they haven't gone that far YET ;)
 
The original Ozzy era IS the best (IMO) but it's very disrespectful to just try and pretend like nothing happened between Never Say Die (1978) and 13 (2013)
 
Whilst the album isn't strictly conceptual it does seem like several of the songs are in the same sort of ballpark, thematically speaking. It's a similar situation to FotD, after the release a few of the band members remarked how almost subconsciously a lot of the songs ended up revolving around the theme of fear. Also similar to AMoLaD, which can be seen almost as a concept album in that regard.
 
Hardly. It isn't even that closely linked thematically.

And when they did try to make a proper concept album, it didn't really turn out one - Seventh Son of Seventh Son isn't really carrying the story on its own. Although I love the songs, I can hardly explain what the "story" is as it's too vague to make any sense.
 
I think we might be giving the guys too much credit here. They put together these songs on the fly in the studio and if there are similarities with their past (whether in song s or circumstances of their career) it can easily be explained by the simple axiom: write what you know.
 
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