Deconstructing Eddie: My Iron Maiden Songs & Albums Countdown

The thing I disagree strongest with so far is having Fates Warning as the worst song from NPFTD. For me, that choice is very easy - The Assassin is a candidate for the overall bottom spot in my book. The chorus is just plain annoying and it does not have any really great parts to compensate for it. Fates Warning has a haunting intro (although Dave has done those better, see Still Life or Deja Vu), vocals that are among Bruce's better on the album, and really good solos (with a nice guitar harmony in between, referencing Screaming For Vengeance).
 
Jeffmetal said:
Sun And Steel is one of Maiden's most underrated alongside Age Of Innocence, Public Enema Number One and The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner.
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I agree with all of those... except SaS :p Although...

TLotLDR is underrated? :huh:
 
Jeffmetal said:
I think it is, man. It was eliminated to fast on the polls.
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I remember it being on the Top 10 of the band's songs when someone did a ranking activity on www.metal-archives.com and generally held in high regard. Then again, this IS a different crowd so IDK. I feel it's received fairly well. It's still on the survivor game although it looks like it's the next SiT song that's getting eliminated.
 
So I missed it, but I did 'cos this is one song I'll vote as least fave to eliminate only when others I like more come along on the same group.
 
I've long consider Loneliness underrated mostly because until I joined this forum I never met anyone who liked it as much as me.
Even though it's hanging on in Survivor, I've seen a few posters question how and why.
For me, the melody is lacking enough to keep it from being an absolute classic, but the guitar parts and the drumming are as good as it gets.
 
Deconstructing Eddie: My Iron Maiden Songs & Albums Countdown - Songs #136 & 135

136. From Here to Eternity (Fear of the Dark) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q83FKwJId2I
"She must be having one of her crazy dreams / She'd never sat on a piece so mean"

I don't think there's any other song on the band's discography where they wear the we-are-a-live-band label on their sleeve more than on this track. They've got all the elements of a live spectacle tailored down to a pat: It's fast, repetitive, easy with an anthemic drive, and they even overdid it so much that the cheesy sing-along chorus on the album version sounds like it's actually from a live take because of the vocal harmonies.

It's musically a cliche-fest, which gets even more pronounced when taken into the context of its music video. It's like Mad Max meets Easy Rider meets Little Nicky and parts of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey: Pillars of fire and brimstone in a post-apocalyptic wasteland... hell's demons and the devil... then a hot chick with a biker in leather and a Harley. And that last part is mainly what the song is all about.
135. Hooks in You (No Prayer for the Dying) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQRSeBoJF-Q
"...hooks in the ceiling for that well hung feeling!"

I think this song could have been significantly improved if the band hadn't jumped into its energetic and high-powered manner straight away. Not only does it scream out being just more of the same thing from an album full of increasingly predictable hard rock numbers, it's also the reason why the song feels less dynamic than how it could have sounded. It's enjoyable, really not that bad and gets molested more than it deserves. The lyrics are remiss and border on ridiculous, but parts of it are impossibly catchy and melodic.

What puts it a step above being banal is that middle segment. A couple of minutes through the song's typical hard rock scheme, everything gets toned down to give way to this darker sounding bridge section that's backed by a memorable guitar lick and builds up to a nifty solo. Once the song gets back to where it left off, it feels like a different kind of explosive beast altogether.

I've never been especially mindful of a song's arrangement; but if only this was structured in a different way, it could have been one of the better songs on the album... although I realized that that's really not saying much, is it?
Yesterday was busy again so two songs again for today :p
 
Most of what you say about Eternity is true, except that it's just so self-aware it works.
This is what they were going for with the Prayer album and failed to execute properly.
It takes everything the hair bands were doing at that time and says, "hey boys, this is really how it's done."
It's no Paschendale, it's just fun and I've got time for that.

Hooks..., well that may even be ranked a little high.
 
Hooks in You is probably the most under rated song in the Maiden catalogue. It's not anything beyond a 7/10 or something but it's pretty cool. Really strong chorus (even if the lyrics are weak) and the entire song is fun. I can see why it's rated down though.
 
Deconstructing Eddie: My Iron Maiden Songs & Albums Countdown - Songs #134 & 133

I'm taking a liking to this two-songs-at-a-time thing...
134. Chains of Misery (Fear of the Dark) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g3dZ5WaGmI
"He's got a vision but it shines out through your eyes"

I really don't know what the band saw in those cheesy, shout-along choruses that they gave the exact same treatment to at least two songs from Fear of the Dark: This one and "From Here to Eternity" - exactly the same treatment - and it gets annoyingly old pretty quick. I can certainly imagine it working in a live setting; but aside from that... meh. Aside from Dave's fabulous solo that almost saves the song, there isn't a lot that either works or is worth writing about. Everything else one needs to know is that aside from the earlier comparison to FHtE, it's also in the same family as tracks like "Weekend Warrior" and "Hooks in You" so if that's your thing...

133. I Live My Way (B-Side) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i46GjnoLK7A
"I've lived on my knees / Trying to please"

It's possibly the rarest track in the Iron Maiden catalog considering that this can only be found on either one of two uncommon issues: The picture disc of the Man On The Edge single or on the bonus disc of the Japanese edition of The X Factor. Although for those that are fairly familiar with the band but haven't gotten acquainted with this one yet, they're not really missing much. It's a standard rocker that's lighter than your typical (read: dark) Blaze-era fare: The type of mongrel you might get when you crossbreed a standard The X Factor track with one from the album before it.

It's short and concise but has no highlights and is bogged down by a poor chorus, which feels like it was taken off a page from the "How to write a Fear of the Dark track" manual. So while I think that Blaze did a good job in his stint with Iron Maiden and takes too much criticism for it, this one is just a sub-par Blaze song and is simply not as memorable as a lot of stuff in the band's rich output.
 
Deconstructing Eddie: My Iron Maiden Songs & Albums Countdown - Songs #132 & 131

^ Awesome, a positive comment :D
132. Justice of the Peace (B-Side) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr0LiWV3WVU
"Nobody has any faith, 'cause there's a breakdown of justice and order"

It seems as though the band left all of the fast-paced rockers out of The X Factor and chose to clump them all together on the Man on the Edge single instead. It wouldn’t have helped the album much to include them in place of some weaker tracks, but at least it would have made TXF feel more varied and less drawn out. As it went, the MotE single ended up taking in all that blistering speed and vigor thanks to its B-Sides, this one included.

While it does have that punchy pulsating groove, I can’t say I enjoy it very much. I’ll probably take a liking to Blaze-era songs more than their reputation dictates because of the full, warm and fat tone that I’m partial to, but most of these B-Sides are B-Sides for a reason. The reason is that they feel like songs that were put together for the sake of putting together a song. Granted, there are handful of similar tracks which made it on some of the band’s albums, but that still doesn’t make a case for a song like this one. It just leaves me feeling vacant and unattached.
131. New Frontier (Dance of Death) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryGX2_cpioU
"Some new Frankenstein damned for all time"

Nicko is amazing. He’s my favorite member of the band. He seems to be a crazy, cool guy and would be a blast to hang out with. Not to mention he’s a sensationally skilled drummer. Nevertheless, this song in itself is the reason why it’s his one and only major songwriting credit as member of Iron Maiden. It’s irrelevant whether he’s crafted a lot of songs in the past that just haven’t made the cut or he rarely composes songs at all. The thing is that “New Frontier” is simply mediocre.

Musically, I find it uninteresting even with that nifty chorus. Lyrically though, it’s really not that bad. People will probably take potshots and judge it unfavorably if they disagree with the ideology behind the song, but I feel like it’s provocative in a conservatively traditionalist manner yet depicts the subject of cloning in a reflective way. It doesn’t feel heavy-handed with its comparisons to Frankenstein, depiction of God and The Devil, Heaven and Hell – and this is coming from someone who hasn’t practiced his Christianity for over a decade. So as far as writing goes, there’s something there that makes me interested to see what else Nicko has to offer. The actual song crafting will need lots of work though.
 
Sorry Vala, while I agree on the generally low ranking of 'New Frontier', the reasons behind my rationale is the exact opposite of yours.  The music is powerful and catchy without that annoying repetitive poppiness, but the lyrics I dislike for the reasons you mentioned. 
 
Genghis Khan said:
Sorry Vala, while I agree on the generally low ranking of 'New Frontier', the reasons behind my rationale is the exact opposite of yours.  The music is powerful and catchy without that annoying repetitive poppiness, but the lyrics I dislike for the reasons you mentioned. 
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Do you dislike the lyrics because it's poorly written or because of the message it's trying to get across? If it's the former, I don't see how the songwriting is subpar... but if it's the latter, then I think I understand.
 
The message.  I dislike using religion to state why cloning is bad.  The phrase 'war of god and man' is especially troubling for me, as Nicko is clearly criticizing science.
 
He's saying there are some things man shouldn't mess with.
Which isn't an unusual theme or a Maiden song (Rime, Thousand Suns come to mind).
Why is it troubling to critique science?
 
What Invader said. The song does not deal with some ethical issues that would arise out of cloning; the song merely offers religious dogma as a smack over the head why cloning is supposedly bad.
 
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