Five years later: The Final Frontier revisited

Five years later, what do you think of the Final Frontier

  • I absolutely love it. It's among their best.

    Votes: 29 23.8%

  • It's a strong album that stands up well to the test of time.

    Votes: 61 50.0%

  • It's OK. I like it, or at least parts of it, but I don't listen to it much.

    Votes: 26 21.3%

  • For a Maiden album, it's pretty weak.

    Votes: 9 7.4%
  • Total voters
    122
I think that BNW is anything but similar to the 80s albums.It is a continuation of what the band did in TXF and VXI but with Bruce doing the singing.4 of the tracks where supoosed to be VXI songs for crying out loud.These songs although really benefiting from Bruce's voice, they suffer from the known afflictions as the latter album.Really poor drumming (apart from the bass pedal) and repetitiveness.H's input is too small and the marvelous Wickerman solo is destroyed by the chorus repetition.

I believe Maiden are still a name due to the vast back catalogue and that they are one of the best live bands ever.What they very cleaverly do is that they produce albums very rarely as to make them "great events".Maiden do not need to make new albums in order to tour.
 
My favorite one two punch would have to be Where Eagles Dare - Revelations. In a lot of ways, those two songs defined Maiden for me when I was getting into them. That said, The Wicker Man - Ghost of the Navigator slays live.
 
Avalon-Starblind is a very strong 1-2 punch, but my favourite 1-2 is Powerslave-Rime. For 3 in a row, my favourite would be Navigator-BNW-Blood Brothers. The last two do suffer from chorus repetitiveness, but their other qualities make them great.
 
"Starblind" - "Talisman" is much preferred here. :P

Gk1 said:
I think that BNW is anything but similar to the 80s albums.It is a continuation of what the band did in TXF and VXI but with Bruce doing the singing.4 of the tracks where supoosed to be VXI songs for crying out loud.These songs although really benefiting from Bruce's voice, they suffer from the known afflictions as the latter album.
Click to expand...

And one of the songs had been played by Janick's band White Spirit as early as 1981... In a slightly different version. ("The Mercenary").
 
The first Maiden album I bought as a new release was NOTB and now faced with another so long afterwards I find myself going through the old routine of listening to the previous album and working my way through the old classics. Funny this time around though I'm starting to feel TFF has it's sound firmly lodged in the late 80's, almost like a belated sequel to SIT. I must admit this was my first listen to TFF in full for over an year and I really enjoyed it.

I wasn't really full of much promise upon it's release as they were following up a very good album in AMOLAD and Maiden generally don't bombard us with two classics in a row. There is a level of acceptability about the reunion albums as an older fan in that they are like comforting sticking plasters on a wound (for me NPFTD/ FOTD, Bruce and Adrian leaving, the Blaze era) and the sound of stability. Sure every song since 2000 isn't classic Maiden but I don't think there are many songs I feel like skipping out of 4 releases so far.

TFF is very solid and if your expectations for Maiden are above this after 35 years as a recording artist then you are expecting too much. I hope for a classic every time but solid will always be acceptable. Book Of Souls will not sound a million miles away from what we are familiar with. Let's hope it just isn't too familiar. I predict something very special this time.
 
slightly OT for this thread, but reading through this and having not yet started the "reunion" albums of the 21st century, I am really excited to get "out of the 90s". The nineties albums were okay, but none of the four were anywhere near the self-titled debut and NotB-SSoaSS stretch from 1982-1988. Killers was the only disappointing album of the 80s.
NPftD was so-so. It had a few decent tracks. FotD is the most underrated album (so far) and about 2/3 of the songs were good. It's true that if you take the best of NPftD and FotD's best tracks, you'd have one great album.
X-Factor is pretty good. It grows on me with each listen. Not a "classic" like some claim, but a solid record. Virtual XII is... meh. It feels like a B-sides album for The X-Factor. It's best songs are just average when compared to the entire discography so far. Two albums of Blaze and I badly miss Bruce.
 
The best song from the blaze era is judgement day. IMO . Blaze is a MAN on this song. I dig everything about this song big time. How it got left off the actual album is beyond my limits of comprehension.
 
I juxt need to take it off my chest.How can someone like TXF is beyond me.The production sucks big time.There are like 4 good riffs is there.The guitar work is bad and the songs are so dull..
 
The X Factor is the second best Iron Maiden album if you ask me (only beaten by A Matter of Life and Death). The production is better than that of half of the catalogue - easily. And to tie that discussion to this thread - that album really is the beginning of the direction they have continued with through The Final Frontier - the long, clean intros, and the drawn out instrumental sections were made into the norm rather than an exception.
 
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