Fear of the Dark: individual album judgement by yours truly

I was 12 when it came out. Too young to be worried about what the media thought or other fans. Especially since I didn't really know anyone else into the band. And I thought it was a fantastic album. Would anyone disagree with me saying this was by far their biggest experimental record?
 
Mosh said:
Yes. Somewhere in Time, X Factor, Dance of Death, Final Frontier all outdo it in this area.
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Hard disagree. There's definitely experimental stuff on those albums, but Fear of the Dark, to me, has more songs in styles they've never touched since. X Factor would be my second pick. That said, I actually agree that those four albums are indeed the next most experimental. Songs like Chains of Misery, Fear is the Key, Weekend Warrior. Very different from earlier stuff. Wasting Love was what I'd consider their first actual power ballad. From Here to Eternity is straight-ahead 70s rock.

I'm also a firm believer that if you strip back the guitar synths from Somewhere in Time, it'd sound a lot like Powerslave. Both albums together are probably the fastest albums they ever wrote.
 
chaosapiant said:
I'm also a firm believer that if you strip back the guitar synths from Somewhere in Time, it'd sound a lot like Powerslave. Both albums together are probably the fastest albums they ever wrote.
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There is some truth to that, but I also think experimenting with instrumentation is still experimentation and deserves to be recognized for what it is. I don't really hear all that much experimentation on Fear of the Dark. They do different things on this album but a lot of it goes back to the same 70s hard rock aesthetic.
 
chaosapiant said:
I'm also a firm believer that if you strip back the guitar synths from Somewhere in Time, it'd sound a lot like Powerslave. Both albums together are probably the fastest albums they ever wrote.
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I'd disagree with that. You're right about the tempo, Powerslave is a frantic burst of upbeat energy that doesn't let up or take a pause until the mid-section of the title track, whereas Somewhere in Time has much more light and shade and variations in the dynamics and mood.
 
The only slowish song on Somewhere in Time is Wasted Years, which is true. Otherwise they're both very fast albums. There's more light and shade, true, but I think it's marginal, compared to any other album. Even the first two albums have more room to breathe than SIT.
 
chaosapiant said:
Would anyone disagree with me saying this was by far their biggest experimental record?
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When I think of Maiden going experimental, FoTD isn't what comes to mind. It comes off as rather safe, especially following No Prayer bombing by being, relatively speaking, a crap record. FoTD comes off as "Yeah, let's see what went wrong here, and fix it".
 
Yax said:
When I think of Maiden going experimental, FoTD isn't what comes to mind. It comes off as rather safe, especially following No Prayer bombing by being, relatively speaking, a crap record. FoTD comes off as "Yeah, let's see what went wrong here, and fix it".
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:D Hell Yeah! Those great songs sure will fix everything:

"Fear Is the Key"
"Wasting Love"
"The Fugitive"
"Chains of Misery"
"The Apparition"
"Weekend Warrior"
 
Azas said:
:D Hell Yeah! Those great songs sure will fix everything:

"Fear Is the Key"
"Wasting Love"
"The Fugitive"
"Chains of Misery"
"The Apparition"
"Weekend Warrior"
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Didn't say they knocked it out of the park, but FoTD is quite a bit better than NPFTD, which I honestly wish they hadn't released at all.

Although FITK and WL are very good tracks, I think.
 
Yea maybe I'm thinking "experimental" means something different than everyone else. Fair enough. It my mind, Fear of the Dark sounds markedly different from any other Maiden album. Right along with X Factor. There's just too many songs on FotD that don't sound like anything on any other album.
 
chaosapiant said:
Yea maybe I'm thinking "experimental" means something different than everyone else. Fair enough. It my mind, Fear of the Dark sounds markedly different from any other Maiden album. Right along with X Factor. There's just too many songs on FotD that don't sound like anything on any other album.
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I do see where you're coming from, but to me it's less "experimenting" and more "throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks".
 
Perun said:
That's... experimenting.
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Maybe I worded it wrong. More "we don't really know we're doing so we'll throw everything we have at it and hope for the best". I don't think there is much (if any) experimenting on this album, there's no dramatic shift in sound and everything is mostly pretty short and straightforward.
 
FOTD does have experimentation. The reason it has a more back-to-roots, stripped down approach is why it is not considered "experimental" as such as compared to Seventh Son and The X Factor.
 
Yax said:
When I think of Maiden going experimental, FoTD isn't what comes to mind. It comes off as rather safe, especially following No Prayer bombing by being, relatively speaking, a crap record. FoTD comes off as "Yeah, let's see what went wrong here, and fix it".
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No Prayer and Fear are very common indeed, but I think the former (minus 1 song) is ''more Maiden'' overall than the latter - which has some very atypical songs for the band. But it's true that with Fear they improved in their style of the early 90's, especially with the longer songs, or the opener, or with some vocal parts, or with some instrumental parts.

The experimental Maiden albums for me are: SIT (only because of the synths), FOTD, TXF and TFF.
Azas said:
:D Hell Yeah! Those great songs sure will fix everything:

"Fear Is the Key"
"Wasting Love"
"The Fugitive"
"Chains of Misery"
"The Apparition"
"Weekend Warrior"
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Songs like Wasting Love, Fugitive and the instrumental part of Weekend Warrior - for sure.
chaosapiant said:
The only slowish song on Somewhere in Time is Wasted Years, which is true. Otherwise they're both very fast albums. There's more light and shade, true, but I think it's marginal, compared to any other album. Even the first two albums have more room to breathe than SIT.
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I wouldn't call Stranger/Alexander faster songs. Killers more room to breathe? Dunno about that.
 
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