Como Estais Amigos

How good is Como Estais Amigos on a scale of 1-10?


  • Total voters
    28
Not the best song on the album, but possibly the strongest. Features everything from a magnificent and emotional performance from Blaze (especially in the chorus) that lives up to the lyrics, to an epic instrumental section, although the solos fall a bit short. Enough for me to give it a very solid 9! Fantastic album closer.
 
I'm just... if Empire of the Clouds didn't exist this might actually be a contender for my favorite Maiden song. Emotional, effective, Blaze went out on the highest note possible. I can't listen to it and not start welling up. I just listened it and I'm still crying from the utter... I don't even know what you call it. Como Estais Amigos is a 10/10, and I'd give it an 11 if I could. Beauty.
 
A song that would have been very appropriate for The X Factor, I think, given the somewhat darker tone. It is definitely quite emotional, and somewhat enjoyable, but I wouldn’t call it an amazing song. 6/10
 
OK so my last post was just me stating that I love this song. Now I'm actually gonna talk about why it's so great and why I love it.

Anti-war songs come in a lot of different shapes and forms. Some of them are just decrying war; some of them pertain to a specific battle, war, or event; and some of the take something specific and yet create a song that's influenced by something but that fits any kind of thing. For The Greater Good Of God fits the first one; The Trooper fits the second. Both of these are good songs, but both of them fall short in creating a truly anti-war statement and feel. Actually, FTGGOG nearly succeeds, the only issue being that fucking repetition. Take out the repetition and you have a truly fantastic song; with it in, it's merely "very good". The Trooper, however, fails on all fronts. The song is one of the least anti-war out of Maiden anti-war songs and yet it's praised the most. I mean, yeah it's great, yeah it deserves the praise, but not as an anti-war song. The Trooper is merely a song about a guy fighting and he dies. Maybe a little more to it but that's what it boils down to.

Now, I myself prefer the third category, and Maiden typically succeed with those kinds of songs. Just look through their discography - The Legacy was initially about a world leader but became instead a mammoth that's less specific and more broad, and in fact doesn't even stick completely to war. Then there's Afraid to Shoot Strangers, written about the Gulf War but still holding up today. And of course there's Paschendale. Paschendale fits both in the specific and specific-with-a-twist category. Yes, it's about a specific battle, but take all mention of the battle out and it still holds up really really well. That's what makes a great anti-war song a great anti-war song.

But when it comes to Maiden's anti-war songs, and you know I've been leading up to this - the one I've gotta go for is this five minute masterpiece called "Como Estais Amigos". Yeah, okay, let's get it over with - Argentina does emphatically not use "estais" and that's more of a Spain thing. The title should be something like "¿Cómo Están Amigos?". And I'm sure many people could gripe about how the biggest metal band in the world should have the time to figure out which countries use "vosotros" and which drop that and solely use "ustedes". I get it. What I don't get is dismissing the song solely on that basis. I also don't get how anyone can dismiss this song after hearing it (why vote 1???) but that's a different story and that delves more into opinion and this is my opinion piece and I don't feel the need currently to attack others'. But yeah; the title is a fail but not drastically. It does not impact the song at all.

Now, title issues aside, the actual song: It starts out quietly with a guitar that's almost reminiscent of the Moog synth on The Beatles' Abbey Road album. It seems a little weird on first listen, but as the listenings increase one finds that it's absolutely integral to the song and you wouldn't want it any other way. Blaze starts quietly: "Como esta amigo / For the death of those we don't know / Shall we kneel and say a prayer / They will never know we care." It's absolutely perfect beginning. You already begin to feel your heart pound, your eyes moisten, preparing for what's next to come.

The chorus is perfection: "No more tears, no more tears / If we live for a hundred years, amigos no more tears." After another bit of verse the song gets heavy - but not so heavy as to lose the beauty. Just heavy enough to remind people this is Iron Maiden.

I wanna say a couple things. Firstly, a criticism: the drums on Virtual XI range from decent to bad. The latter is most apparent during this song's verses. Not enough to bring the song down because literally everything else is utter perfection. Secondly: as much as I love VXI, I think one has to admit that the lyrics took a dive. Luckily the songs are all good enough that the lyrical genius, or rather, lack thereof, isn't as necessary here. That being said, Como Estais Amigos has amazing lyrics. All of it, each verse is beautiful. I hate to say it, but it might be because of lack of Steve. It's the only song on the album he didn't contribute to and instead Blaze and Janick teamed up to pen it, inspired by their trip to Argentina and their wonderment at the Falkland War memorials. Como Estais Amigos proves two things: that despite some of the lackluster lyrics he'd written (When Two Worlds Collide comes to mind), Blaze could actually write a great song; and that it was no false hypothesis, Janick really was becoming a great songwriter.

Now why does Como Estais stack up so well and possibly so much better than many other anti-war songs? After all, it's about the Falkland War. After all, that took place in 1982 during the whole Number of the Beast thing, why bring it up again now? Well, Como Estais is a tribute to all the people who died then, needlessly because of the wickedness of the human heart. Actually, you could extend it to include anyone who's ever died needlessly because of the wickedness of the human heart. That's what I love about Como Estais Amigos and songs in that vain: yes, it's written about a specific thing, but if you take about that thing it still holds up well as an anti-war song. It's someone whose country was once moving against another country and firmly extending an olive branch to them.

How can you say it was written for nothing? How can you say you hate this song? How can you give it a 1 of all things? This song is perfect; it's both Janick and Blaze's best moment and furthermore, the single best moment in Maiden's discography, discounting Empire of the Clouds. It's beautiful. It's a masterpiece. And anyone who thinks otherwise, please go listen to this song again.

In a mere five minutes, Maiden closed the door on the Blaze albums. Yet in that five minutes they put together something that can stand for eternity. While I love what's happened since Bruce's return, there's a major part of me that wishes we could've had a longer period of the separation. Not only would we see how epic Bruce could make his follow-up to The Chemical Wedding, but also - if they could craft this thing in their "down" period, then imagine what could have happened next.

Blaze, Steve, Nicko, Janick, Dave - I love all five. They made two masterpieces: the entire X Factor album, and Como Estais Amigos. Just greatness. Outside of Empire, this song is the best thing Maiden have ever made. 10/10, no sweat.

P.S. It's interesting that song that tells you "no more tears" is the song that will love you with more tears than any other.
 
Sleepy, inconsistent soft Blaze makes his return in the intro, but he sounds noticeably better in the chorus, at least until he hits his usual off-key whoah-oh-ohs.

He sounds iffy on the pre-chorus, and still can't hold the longer notes on the chorus without going out of key, but sadly he does better here than on most of the rest of the album.

The musical break is nice, and gets interesting in the first solo section, if a little bit disconnected. Then we return to the chorus, which is catchy and pleasant if you can ignore the iffy quality of the singing.

Not a lot going on here musically outside of the main vocal; and while the intended vocal line is nice, Blaze can't seem to stay on it. There's nothing aggressively bad about this song, so I'll be charitable and give it a 5/10.
 
... instrumental section brings a tear in my eye.
... and then comes the interlude. It's absolutly incredible.
The instrumental section is nice and powerful...
Janick proves once more that he has a knack for beautiful melodic solos when it comes to mid-tempo material.
Features [...] an epic instrumental section...
Actually it reminds me of...
Blaze and Janick teamed up to pen it, inspired by...
 
I've already stated why I love this song so much many times in the past. It's a beautiful, meaningful, emotionally anti-war song and a Top 3 song from the band. 10
 
This song and ''Empire Of The Clouds'' are the only album closers that are not written (or co-written) by Steve.

Steve: ''Como Estais Amigos is an excellent album closer''.
 
Hi, I've reopened this song for voting, after resetting the votes.

Please add your vote for this song and consider the following tips:

  • Try to be consistent across the Iron Maiden catalogue. Don't vote based on the place on the album, but the place in the overall catalogue.
  • 1 should be the worst Iron Maiden songs, 10 should be the best. You can have lots of 10s and 1s as you see fit.
  • Don't vote based on other people's votes. IE, if you think a song is overrated, don't give it a 1 or 2 just because you think it's getting "too high" of votes.
 
My favourite song by Iron Maiden, ever.
The lyrics (grammatical errors aside :D), the middle part, the solos, all perfect.
It's a crime against humanity that this was the only song not played live from Virtual.
Seen Blaze do this song many times, always the highlight of the show.
 
I'm lucky to have seen Blaze perform this acoustically in a tiny record shop in Wolverhampton a few years ago. Absolutely haunting, such a beautiful song.

For some reason, I don't see this is as a Maiden song, I see it as a Blaze song. He just owns it whenever he plays it solo.
 
Back
Top