GREATEST METAL ALBUM CUP - Winner: Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son!

Forostar said:
Face in the Sand: a very captivating intro. The problem of this song are the last couple of minutes in which certain parts are repeated too often. The total result is too monotonous, really.

No More Lies......

:yawn:

I find this one not the worst, but certainly the most predictable and unimaginative song Maiden ever did.
The Angel and the Gambler has a more surprising build-up.

- - - - - - -

Dramatis Personae
J: Janick
D: Dave
B: Bruce
A: Adrian
N: Nicko
S: Steve

Notting Hill, London... recordings of Dance of Death, Maiden’s thirteenth studio album…

A, D, J, N and B are having a beer in the bar.

J: Where is Steve?
D: He has it again.
B: What?
D: It is that time again.
A: Huh? What do you mean, Dave?
N: What hoooo! Hahaha!
B (slightly annoyed): Come on Nicko, lay it off for a minute will ya?
A: Yeah, Nicko, stop it, I don’t like this, I want to know what’s going on.
D: Steve is busy in the studio. It will take hours before we see him.
J: Huh… we have done 10 songs.
D: Yes, but he told me has some kind of tradition. On every album he wants to do at least one song by himself.

A sighs, with a worried look on his face.
B orders another beer, and looks kind of agitated.

N: Don’t worry guys, I thought we had agreed that we wouldn’t be bothered by this kind of stuff.
J: Yeah. Maybe it’ll be good!
A: Yeah. Maybe.

The guys decide to drink a few more beers and go to bed.
Next morning, they gather at the breakfast table.

A: Still no Steve.
B: I’ve had it, let’s go to him.
D: Guys ….
N: Let them, Dave, we’ll go with them. Come on, Jan.
J: I am curious too.

With firm footsteps they go to the recording room, finding S with a ghastly face.
He curses the others with the eye.

S: Four times fifty different chord schemes, and I still have no clue what to do.
With heavy fingers, lifeless fingers, my ideas wished they’d die.

S shakes his head, turns his white and sweaty face to D.

S: Dave, I told you to keep them away from me. I don’t want to be interrupted when I am wearing my albatr… eh bass around my neck!
J: So what do you have?
S, while strumming his bass: I only have this freakin’ chord scheme.
A: Hey, that sounds familiar. It reminds me of … ouch!!

Nicko takes his elbow out of Adrian’s ribs.

D: Let me see, if you change this and that a bit, then you have a few variations.
He plays it on his own guitar. S’s face changes dramatically.

S: Wow! That’s what I needed.
B: It still sounds quite the same to me.

S whistles the melodies D just came up with.

S: I need an intro too.
D: No problem, we’ll use your scheme and my variations again. We can use exactly the same chord progression, it will be the same as the couplets. We’ll just freak around with some calm guitars, like we always do. Right Adrian?

A (happy with Paschendale and not in the mood for discussion): Alright.
N: Janick?
J: I guess I will play the last solo again. But OK, you two guys work something out.
S: Alright Dave, come on. The rest: OUT!
N: Can I stay Steve?
S: OK.

Bruce, Janick and Adrian leave, slightly worried about the result.

After an hour they hear loud noise coming from the recording room. They head back to discover that S is engaged in a fistfight with D. N tries to keep them away from each other, catching some blows –with lots of tempo and rhythm changes- in the process.

B: What the fuck is going on here?
D after taking a deep breath: Look… I have helped you with this song Steve, so it’d be fair if I would get a co-credit. If I hadn’t helped you, you still would have this single bloody chord scheme!
S: No. I want to have one song by myself. That’s my tradition.
D: That’s not fair! People will say it’s not true when I tell them I contributed.

The face of S reddens.

S: We won’t tell anyone. This song is mine! When people ask, you guys are bound to tell this story, this tale, wherever you go. To teach this word by my own example. That we must love all things that I made.

J looks puzzled.

B: Do you have lyrics of your own, Steve?
S after some hesitation: Well, that was one other thing I’d like to….
D interrupts: I don’t care. I don’t want this crap anymore. I can’t stand it anymore!
S: What can’t you stand anymore?
D: No more!
S: No more what?
D: No more lies!
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You should´ve post this in the Maiden Stories thread. :blush:
 
karljant said:
Ah forgot to mention this one... have you listened to Deconstruction? I can easily bare the onslaught of any SYL album but half of the songs on that fucker are so dense, so chaotic that I rarely pick that album. Although being the spawn of an already stable person, Deconstruction is an ironical, comical approach but way too dense, chaotic and saturating at times even to my ears. By far the hardest listening Dev album IMO.
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Not just listened to it, it's my album of his :D I nominated it (and also the first Ziltoid and Ocean Machine) for the game.

Musically it's very chaotic, but like... it's done in retrospect, it's not like in Infinity/Alien where he was fucked, so I didn't count it as "mental".
Those 3 albums have their own unique idea of crazy:

Infinity is more on the weird part, the production is an acquired taste (the first time I heard Truth, I wasn't even sure if I'm hearing vocals... I wasn't prepared :) ), songs like Soul Driven and Ants are very WTF.

Deconstruction is nothing like it, the craziness is technical and the WTF factor comes from it and from the lyrics. But the songs, especially the long ones, are much more like stitches of different parts, all made for the same goal of being insane. On Infinity truly has it's own identity, each one is it's own mini genre while Deconstruction is strangely cohesive and for this reason is the easiest to swallow for me.

Finally Alien is very extreme crazy, and ultra cathartic, each song has like 4 crescendos. And all this emotional buildup and release is very hard on the spirit.
 
Jer said:
...which is a rehash of the melodic lines from “Dance Of Death”, a mere 4 tracks earlier.
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Which I've always liked since it feels - to me - like a recap of where we've been as we head to the closing three songs which brings things to a close.
 
Diesel 11 said:
Which I've always liked since it feels - to me - like a recap of where we've been as we head to the closing three songs which brings things to a close.
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And maybe it was intentional. If there were other repeated musical themes on the album then I’d probably agree with that interpretation, but I’m not aware of any others.

Harris is the only shared songwriter between the two songs, so who knows. Maybe it’s intentional, maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it’s self-plagiarism. But it always stuck out to me like a sore thumb.
 
Shmoolikipod said:
Not just listened to it, it's my album of his :D I nominated it (and also the first Ziltoid and Ocean Machine) for the game.
Click to expand...
Ocean Machine is, obviously, an immensely great record and is borderline regarding my top 5 Devin records (I'd still prefer Infinity, Terria, Epicloud, Physicist - underrated as hell - and then Ocean Machine is tied with Empath and Addicted in my list). Ziltoid is perhaps one of the albums I like the least from his catalogue
Shmoolikipod said:
Deconstruction is nothing like it, the craziness is technical and the WTF factor comes from it and from the lyrics. But the songs, especially the long ones, are much more like stitches of different parts, all made for the same goal of being insane. On Infinity truly has it's own identity, each one is it's own mini genre while Deconstruction is strangely cohesive and for this reason is the easiest to swallow for me.
Click to expand...
Yup... it's another of his "masks" but at least he's perfectly aware he's using it. The reason why you find Deconstruction cohesive is simple: it's a conceptual album (and in all honesty the majority of them have a lot in common). If you don't know the story behind it just google it: you'll piss your pants laughing. Infinity is precisely the opposite: it's all over the place trying to suck every single aspect of the guy's life into a single album.
Shmoolikipod said:
Infinity is more on the weird part
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Mmmm Infinity is where he was REALLY crazy... batshit crazy to tell the truth! Developing a god complex, drowned in dope and estranging all his loved ones. The lyrical content is not that crazy when compared with more extreme recordings. And IMO neither is the sound. But the circumstances are by far the wackiest ones in this guy's career.
Shmoolikipod said:
Alien is very extreme crazy, and ultra cathartic, each song has like 4 crescendos. And all this emotional buildup and release is very hard on the spirit.
Click to expand...
Alien is Devin trying to pull himself beyond the extreme, to a certain kind of hateful, misanthropic animal he came to the conclusion he wasn't, discovering he was quite the opposite: a sensible guy that even gets affected by some stuff other people find trivial. And that kinda messed up with his "masculinity"... so that's why he went over the top to prove he was "tough" and "extreme". He talks about it on the last podcast and considers it to be one of the most enlightening, well crafted and important records of his career. I think it sort of made him take a self knowing trip by the opposite route: showing him everything he isn't.

Nevertheless, if Alien can surely be overwhelming, extreme and even scary the sonic structure of Deconstruction is reaaaaaaaaaaaaally dense, bloated and mind frying (even being based in sort of a wacky story... while something tells me there's a lot of metaphors in it regarding Dev himself: it's a recurring selfish trait that spans throughout almost every single one of his recordings like he already admitted).
 
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Forostar said:
Wow, had not expected so much negativity (i.e. underappreciation) about Head On.
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Underappreciation isn't negativity. Lots of people said lots of nice things about Head On. The real good part is people who hadn't heard it before.

If you think the point of this game is winning then you haven't been paying attention.
 
As a side note, I think more genre specific versions of this game in the future could be fun. A NWOBHM cup for example. Samson could really clean up there.
 
Samson can't hold on against Iron Maiden, and are eliminated from the GMAC. Maiden next faces Ghost.
Coroner overcomes Killswitch Engage fairly easily. Killswitch is gone, and next up is Angel City.
Primordial ends Dark Angel's time in the GMAC. They're up against Godsmack next.
Finally, Devin Townsend can't hold up against Running Wild, who will pirate on. Devin Townsend is back in League 11.
 
2844838

Amputated - Wading Through Rancid Offal (2009)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Diesel 11
League 12 - Match 1vs.
Nightmare_logic_cover.jpg

Power Trip - Nightmare Logic (2017)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Whooten
Previous Rounds:
League 13: Defeated Katatonia - Brave Murder Day 13-8.
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Atlantean-Kodex_Course-of-Empire-300x300.jpg

Atlantean Kodex - The Course of Empire (2019)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Perun
League 12 - Match 2vs.
DeathSOP-1998.jpg

Death - The Sound of Perseverance (1998)

How it got here
List entries: Metal Kingdom 94
Previous Rounds:
League 18: Defeated Deafheaven - Sunbather 28-2.
League 17: Defeated Soundgarden - Louder Than Love 15-12.
League 16: Defeated Marilyn Manson - Portrait of an American Family 21-4.
League 15: Defeated Insomnium - Winter’s Gate 16-8.
League 14: Defeated HIM - Venus Doom 19-3.
League 13: Defeated Bullet For My Valentine - Fever 17-4.
 
Colors1.jpg

Between the Buried and Me - Colors (2007)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Mosh
League 12 - Match 3vs.
Combat_KIMB.jpg

Megadeth - Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good! (1985)
How it got here
List entries: Metal Rules 85
Previous Rounds:
League 17: Defeated Evanescence - Fallen 22-6.
League 16: Defeated Helmet - Meantime 22-2.
League 15: Defeated Jason Becker - Perpetual Burn 20-5.
League 14: Defeated Fear Factory - Demanufacture 19-3.
League 13: Defeated Grand Magus - Triumph and Power 12-10.
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Buckethead_-_crime_slunk_scene.jpg

Buckethead - Crime Slunk Scene (2006)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Diesel 11
League 12 - Match 4vs.
Where_Greater_Men_Have_Fallen.jpg

Primordial - Where Greater Men Have Fallen (2014)

How it got here
List entries: n/a
Maidenfans Nominators: @Perun
Previous Rounds:
League 13: Defeated Possessed - Seven Churches 16-5.
 
RIP Riley Gale, but Power Trip must live on!

The Death / Atlantean Kodex are pretty opposite in styles. To each their own.

Megadeth also continues their dominating run up the leagues. I did like Between the Buried and me about 10x more than I expected to, but it wasn't enough to overcome a steaming 30 minutes of fresh 80s thrash.

I'll throw Diesel a bone, it's not fair his other nomination this round is up against a newly minted classic less than a week after their singer dies. Buckethead.
 
Sweet, two of my nominations!

Amputated is in a similar boat as Inhumano were some rounds ago. I love this album just for it sounding exactly as the title says. It really feels like you’re deep in a sewer and all the nightmares inside are coming to claim you. Unlike Inhumano though, they’re less technical musicians, but that’s okay because they do exactly what they set out to do. Fun fact: this band was part of a British TV show about matching up artists of completely different styles and writing a song together. Amputated ended up working with a girl group and while they at first completely fell into the stereotypical image of dumb and stupid metalheads they managed to work together and actually write a unique (but messy) song about predators, with the women taking on the role of the victims.

And then Buckethead. Paging @CriedWhenBrucieLeft ! This is my go-to album when I want traditional Buckethead. A good chunk of the songs are typical Buckethead compositions where he just starts playing and rips it up, and others like King James (my favorite Buckethead song) are a bit more controlled in their composition. And then there’s Soothsayer. It was my first exposure to Buckethead and I was just blown away by how much he pored into that song. It’s nine minutes long, and if you’re not into instrumental music I urge you to give it a chance because it doesn’t drag at all. It’s a very emotional piece of music (dedicated to his Aunt Suzie) and builds up until it all pays off at the end. It does get noodly, but it’s not a masturbatory kind. It’s just a very well composed song.

So those are my submissions. I don’t expect Amputated to win, most people will probably say “it’s not even music!”, but I like it and wanted to give it more exposure, hence why I nominated the album. Buckethead will have a better chance I assume, since it’s more up the alley of a lot of you than Amputated is. But both are great albums IMO. Good stuff.
 
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