When I was listening to it yesterday for the first time, I was devastated. This song turned out to be such a letdown...
The intro is great. The melody is beautiful and the majority of parts with vocals are cool. They could build an 8 or 9 minute song around it and it would be very strong. Now... The whole middle part is what I have a problem with. I don't think it's good composing... These guitar parts are boring, overstretched and shockingly uninspired. It has no density. There's just no material here for an 18 minute song, which makes it sound forced. Plus, the reuse of The Legacy riff is outrageous (just like Wasted Years in Shadows of the Valley, but that's a whole nother topic). Maiden tried too much to be as orchestral and cinematic as possible in this song. I would say they just don't feel it, but come on... They've already done proper epics, so I don't know what happened with their taste here. The majority of this song is not epic, it just tries to be bombastic beyond limits. The parts like 6:57, 12:55 or 14:24 are cringeworthy... So cheesy. What the hell. Maiden quite often balanced on the verge of kitsch, but this time, man... They crossed the line.
Fake orchestra sounds so fucking bad. It's so terrible I cringed every time I heard a "cello" or some "horns". The guy didn't even use legato patches - it's fucking 2015, you can do better than that with virtual instruments, man... For God's sake, I think they could easily afford recording real instruments... But I guess they wanted to do it quick. Piano sounds fine at the beginning, but it's unnecessary later on... They have three bloody guitars, and there is no problem with them covering all these lines. The piano doesn't work well when the whole band is playing.
Bruce, I love you man, but this was a mistake.
I'm so mad right now :/ No offence to all the people who liked it. I don't know, maybe this criticism is a bit excessive, but right now I'm a seriously disappointed man.
That's what lets you know it's an amazing song though.
