Dance Of Death aged very well

Josh

Ancient Mariner
To me this blows away every 90's album made (Although I have a soft spot for The X Factor). It's like FOTD for the post reunion material except twice as good. Montsegur is an absolute beast. Paschendale is a masterpiece. Rainmaker is a great single. Gates Of Tomorrow is sneaky good. No More Lies has some of the best mid-section Maiden you can find. The title track can be labeled as borderline Spinal Tap but musically it's a goldmine. Even New Frontier is a fun listen. The only real downer I can find is Age Of Innocence and some of Face In The Sand. Journeyman I can do or do without.

Anyway, the point is input. What do you guys think?
 
To me this blows away every 90's album made
No Prayer is a little better, I think.
It's like FOTD for the post reunion material
You’ll get a lot of agreement on this part of your comment, but not for the reason you might think!
Montsegur is an absolute beast.
It’s fine, not great.
Paschendale is a masterpiece.
Nope. Massively overrated. The vocal line following the guitars through all the verses basically ruins them, IMO. And the original mix is muddy as hell.
Rainmaker is a great single.
Yes.
Gates Of Tomorrow is sneaky good.
The chorus is pretty good, but those doubled vocals on the verses are terrible.
No More Lies has some of the best mid-section Maiden you can find.
Yes, but the rest of the song doesn’t meet that standard, especially the ridiculously repetitive chorus.
The title track can be labeled as borderline Spinal Tap but musically it's a goldmine.
If it didn’t have that awful faster-tempo section it would be pretty great. It’s still quite good with great parts.
Even New Frontier is a fun listen.
I agree this one’s underrated.
The only real downer I can find is Age Of Innocence and some of Face In The Sand. Journeyman I can do or do without.
I think “Age Of Innocence” is fine — it has some nice melodic bits in it. But the chorus of “Journeyman” is terrible.

Dance Of Death has muddy production (improved a bit with some EQ trickery on the 2015 remaster) and some really bizarre choices with some of the vocals, as well as some recurring flaws in the songwriting. It’s not bad, but most of the songs are merely good, and a few are just mediocre to OK. “Rainmaker” is the only song that I could actually call great on that album. To me it’s the weakest reunion record by a good margin.
 
I think, of all the Maiden albums that have come out since I became a fan, Dance of Death is the one that has seen my opinion change the least since launch. Obviously, I was excited, over the moon. I was nineteen (it came out on my nineteenth birthday) and the day consisted of buying alcohol for the first time, buying a CD, and coming home to drink one and listen to the other.

I still like the album. I really like every Iron Maiden album! But the lows - Wildest Dreams, Gates of Tomorrow, Age of Innocence, Journeyman - remain very low, and the highs - Dance of Death, Paschendale, Rainmaker - remain very high (with Paschendale being, for my money, the best composition the band's ever put together). And yeah, I've mostly held to that for the past 18 years. The other albums have changed a fair bit. It took me awhile to really love A Matter of Life and Death, but now I'd call it the best reunion album. The Final Frontier has come down a lot since the first listen. The Book of Souls has come down too, though not as much.

Anyway, I think it's a good album! But what do I know, I'm a hardcore Iron Maiden fan.
 
BNW and DOD are the only reunion albums I never listen to. I think Paschendale is a cool song. DOD -the song- is cool too (minus the too long intro) but that's about it. It did not stand the test of time as an album. Still better than BNW but this was an easy task anyway!
 
Ill agree on Paschendale being overrated, ok song tho.
Journeyman is a pretty good song, I like it a lot
The self titled song reminds me of FOTD, nice song too
Montsegur I also like
I need to give face in the sand another listen to form an oppinion.
Just like FOTD, 4 good songs along with some very forgetable ones.
 
I listened to the album a few days ago, probably the first time in five or six years, and I had forgotten how good it is.

It does have a couple of songs which drag a bit, but the best songs are fantastic. Paschendale is alongside 1000 Suns the best song since the 80's.

Gates of Tomorrow, New Frontier and Age of Innocence are the weakest songs on the album, altough all three songs have some parts which are decent or even very good.
 
TBH I think that the last 3 albums aged well enough!
 
Dance Of Death is a great and underrated album. One of my favorite Maiden albums as a whole piece.

The only song which I don't like is ''Age Of Innocence''. The classics are: the title track, ''Paschendale'', ''Rainmaker'' and ''No More Lies''. I like ''Journeyman'' a lot. The hidden gem is ''Face In The Sand''. ''Wildest Dreams'' is a fun song. ''Gates Of Tomorrow'', ''New Frontier'' and ''Montségur'' are very good songs too.

- the album is notable with some new things for the band: first songwriting credit of Nicko, the first and only track in which Nicko uses a double bass pedal and the first and only fully acoustic song.
 
I really did not like it when it came out, it was my least favorite of the lot. Especially the production, lots of one-finger synths and some poor vocals of Bruce on this one.

But I tried it again about four years ago. The production is still terrible, but I forgot how versatile the songs are, you’ll have a bit of everything there. The title track and Paschendale are great epics (now very common on Maiden albums), Rainmaker is a great short track, Montsegur is a heavy one, New frontier with its melodic chorus. Face in the sand has that great build up with double bass, Journeyman is an excellent ballad to end the album.

I still don’t like Wildest dreams, No more lies and Gates of tomorrow. And it is far from a personal favorite of mine, but I certainly think the album is way better now then back in 2003.
 
Album No. 13, it holds the unique position in that the real world timeline and my story timeline coexist simultaneously with this record. Nevermind, I'm mad.:nuts2:
There's nothing here I actively dislike and a whole lot that I do like.
New Frontier has a strong middle, Monsegur and Rainmaker my favorites, Paschendale big and powerful.
I still enjoy it on many different levels, nostalgia being one.
 
Dance of Death was actually one of the first albums I got back in 2005. I think it was Number of the Beast, Edward the Great and Dance of Death. I listened a lot to DOD that summer. While AMOLAD was the first new studio album for me, Death on the Road was the first new release when it was released, so Dance of Death and that period definitely is special to me.
 
What I wrote last year about the album still stands as my opinion:

Musically, Dance of Death is not Maiden's best and not their worst. It has great songs (Rainmaker, No More Lies, Dance of Death, Paschendale) and weak ones (Gates of Tomorrow, which I maintain is just a remake of Lord of the Flies, New Frontier, Age of Innocence) and a lot that are just bubbling around insignificantly. On bad days, Bruce's chicken clucking on Montségur can get on my nerves a bit. To give credit where credit is due, the album broke a lot of new ground at the time: First all-acoustic song, first song written by Nicko, first use of double-pedal bass drums, first Adrian-written epic. But I can't help but notice that, with the exception of Adrian's songwriting achievement, these are all not only the first, but also the only instances of these things. They were all long-anticipated experiments that just left kind of a confused mess.

The confusion carries over to the lyrical themes of the album. It contains the lines "Still burning heretics under our sky/Religion still burning inside" and "Create a beast, made a man without a soul/Is it worth the risk, a war of God and Man?", is bookended by calls for complete self-determination (Wildest Dreams, Rainmaker, Journeyman) but has a long, reactionary ramble for state authority (Age of Innocence) and has a weird song about how only you can determine your fate and God doesn't do anything (Gates of Tomorrow) followed by one which says we shouldn't try to play god (New Frontier)...

The whole package just doesn't feel consistent or right. The album cover has a good painting with a great thematic idea messed up by half-finished CGI, and that somehow stands emblematic for the whole album. You kind of get a feel for what it's trying to be, and the brilliance does surface more often than not, but if only you could get rid of all the half-arsery that stands in its way...
 
Love Dance of Death. I was 21 when it came out just as I was handing in a final university assignment.

It has aged very well, cover aside. The only track I dislike is Age of Innocence. Early signs of a British Lion-type vibe in Steve's writing to my ears, very much middle-aged Englishman rock.

But that's the nice thing about the 75 - 80 minute albums, a bad track or two and you still have over an hour of awesomeness. There are some real highs on that album and overall I rate it highly.
 
DOD was the first album I waited for. The building of the hype over the summer was amazing. I remember watching the Rock AM Ring show on TV and being blown away by the band and I lived Wildest Dreams.

I still love this album. It has some low songs (AOI) but most of the album is solid or excellent. I would rate it higher than TFF and BOS. It has a great balance between profit material and short rockers.
 
To me this blows away every 90's album made
It’s not as good as The X Factor IMO and I may also rank it below Virtual XI, but I’m not 100% sure at the moment.
It's like FOTD for the post reunion material
This actually makes a lot of sense, regardless of whether you like or dislike both albums. They both have some songs that stick to their classic style but a lot of others that step outside of their comfort zones. Very experimental records where the band were willing to chuck in the kitchen sink if someone was up for writing it.
Montsegur is an absolute beast.
It is! It’s definitely among the heaviest songs Maiden have ever made. My one issue with it aside from the production (which is a flaw of the whole album) is the final repeat of “as we kill them all” where Bruce sounds like he forgot the lines and just winged it. It confuses me a lot. Beyond that it’s pretty awesome.
Paschendale is a masterpiece.
Definitely.
Rainmaker is a great single.
For sure. I’m still a little confused as to why they used the verse - chorus - post-chorus - chorus structure for the first half on this and “Different World”, but it doesn’t ruin my enjoyment of either.
Gates Of Tomorrow is sneaky good.
It’s underrated as hell. One of the band’s best reunion era rockers. Love the riff callback to “Lord of the Flies”, the jaunty verses, and the catchy as hell chorus.
No More Lies has some of the best mid-section Maiden you can find.
I don’t wanna say it’s a forgettable song because I actually like it quite a lot. It’s got a wonderful atmosphere and I like Steve’s portrayal of Christ at the Last Supper. Still, I think that’s one of the issues with DoD. With so much experimentation happening it’s easy to forget about these songs being part of the Maiden discography because they’re so different from what they normally do (same with TFF in a way). It’s also the weakest solo Harris song of the reunion era, but when the other contestants are “Blood Brothers”, “For the Greater Good of God”, “When the Wild Wind Blows”, and “The Red and the Black”, then there’s no shame in coming last.
The title track can be labeled as borderline Spinal Tap but musically it's a goldmine.
This one I find slightly overrated. Some of the sections feel kind of ham-fisted, particularly that verse where the tempo picks up and Bruce struggles to keep up. Beyond that though it’s really fun, terrific live, and great to sing along to.
Even New Frontier is a fun listen.
Yeah, I don’t mind the somewhat questionable lyrics very much because it’s fun and feels like you’re thrust into the story it’s trying to tell. Underrated definitely.
The only real downer I can find is Age Of Innocence and some of Face In The Sand. Journeyman I can do or do without.
“Journeyman” is another fun experiment and I think it’s pulled off decently well. The chorus repetition borders obnoxious but ends up working in the end. “Face in the Sand” is a dark song for Maiden and another cool experiment that I like quite a bit. “Age of Innocence” is definitely bottom of the barrel stuff though. The chorus is decent but the verses are pretty bad and it’s among the weakest of the reunion era. Dumb lyrics too.

As a whole I think it’s a great album and its off-kilter, experimental nature makes it somewhat endearing. It’s probably #4 for me from the reunion though, just because the other albums are pretty monolithic (aside from TFF which is kinda off-kilter like DOD but slightly worse).
 
One of Maidens best albums, in my opinion. The title track, Paschendale and Face In The Sand are all fantastic. Rainmaker, No More Lies and Montsegur are all very good too. None of the remaining songs offend the ears.

Yeah, it's a little inconsistent but to me that says more about its highs than its lows.
 
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