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

Cornfed Hick said:
Oh yeah. That's another knock on The X Factor. One or two "epics" (i.e., long tracks) per album: great, go for it. Five or more: excessive, overindulgent and lazy. (...) If The X Factor started that trend, and @karljant is probably correct that it did, then I view that as a fault.
Click to expand...
Well I don't... to the point my favorite album album since then (by far) is filled with lengthy songs (AMOLAD). Opinions.
Forostar said:
I agree with most, but can't say TXF saved their career. The album (and era) got far more flak than No Prayer and FOTD.
Click to expand...
Could even get more flak than St. Anger: I would still love it the same. And I didn't said The X Factor saved Maiden's career as a fact. I said it saved what I love more in their DNA by bringing back what I (very important) consider the band does better. If they continued doing albums based on a more simple template of heavy/hard rock like NPFTD or FOTD throughout the years perhaps it would have worked as well as it did in real life, who knows? But one thing's certain: I wouldn't be as much of a fan of it for sure since I (very important) like 1000000 times more their epic/prog vein.
Mosh said:
I think X Factor saved Maiden in the sense that it put them on a course for long term success and a formula for making new music that didn’t sound like a retread of old material.
Click to expand...
Agreed... and this is part of the reason why it re-ashed my interest in the band back then. Although I believe it wasn't a totally "new formula" I do concur it was a modernization of the old epic Maiden sound (with increasing focus on epic/ prog metal structures).
 
Last edited:
Mosh said:
I have a hard time seeing how the songs are any better than anything on Redeemer of Souls, yet that album was widely panned and Firepower was critically acclaimed and loved by fans across the board.
Click to expand...
Mmmmm... curious... I never had that impression that ROS was widely panned. On the contrary: many people enjoyed the album and embraced it as a return to form after Nostradamus. And I sure was one of them. ROS is IMO a good Priest record and although it's a fact that Firepower is a way better produced album, that's not the reason I prefer it to its predecessor.
 
Last edited:
I would never ever vote for a "Firepower" type against "X Factor" type, even if it were better.

TXF is a honest, fuck you type of an affair from a band that has 0 pretentions of being accessible.
Firepower is hiring young people and using super production to make an old band feel powerful again.

And Firepower leading currently just shows how much this board, and the overall metal community likes its metal cheese. People usually poke Maiden (myself included) for the E minor chord sequences. In reality Maiden puts that under verses while the same song will include a ton of other "proggy" moments. Firepower is a show of how much JP and the entire genre is able to abuse three scales for the every ingredient in the song. Riffs, vocal lines, solos, you name it. Combined with a highly unremarkable rhythm section that plays straight all the time.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Zare said:
Firepower is hiring young people and using super production to make an old band feel powerful again.
Click to expand...
Not that it's a bad thing, since the composing is there and the band can deliver its songs live (even Halford with some limitations here and there). But I understand where you're coming from.
 
Zare said:
I would never ever vote for a "Firepower" type against "X Factor" type, even if it were better.

TXF is a honest, fuck you type of an affair from a band that has 0 pretentions of being accessible.
Firepower is hiring young people and using super production to make an old band feel powerful again.

And Firepower leading currently just shows how much this board, and the overall metal community likes its metal cheese. People usually poke Maiden (myself included) for the E minor chord sequences. In reality Maiden puts that under verses while the same song will include a ton of other "proggy" moments. Firepower is a show of how much JP and the entire genre is able to abuse three scales for the every ingredient in the song. Riffs, vocal lines, solos, you name it. Combined with a highly unremarkable rhythm section that plays straight all the time.
Click to expand...

I kind of agree with all of what you say there, despite voting the opposite way. And I think Firepower is benefiting from being the latest album as well.
 
srfc said:
Speaking of brickwalled, the opposite can be just as bad. I bought the clear vinyl of the X Factor in 1995, and the intro of Look for the Truth is so quiet that it might as well be a minute or so of silence.
Click to expand...
This shit actually drives me crazy more than brickwalling. A lot of The X Factor is that way. Also one of the many reasons I despise the production on the last four Opeth albums.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
No, it wouldn’t, because it would still be recorded, mixed, and unmastered by Steve Harris.
Click to expand...

Bass and drums sound great on TXF.

I blame it on Murray and Gers, the sonic failure of rhythm guitars. They should have known you don't just mic up a Marshall cabinet for that big sound. Why didn't they multitrack and stack the rhythm guitars? Maybe because both are not studio savvy and like to just "play it out".

Harris can't do the guitar sound that's obvious from all the 90's albums bar Birch's last work. To say entire thing is on him it's not fair.

Murray and Gers don't get enough credit for sounding that weak on album and that strong live.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
Also one of the many reasons I despise the production on the last four Opeth albums.
Click to expand...
That's odd - I never noticed any dramatic volume swings on those albums. The main problem I have with them is how muddy they are.

Diesel 11 said:
Brickwalling is way worse for me. I’ve learned to love the production of The X Factor. I still fucking hate how Dance of Death sounds.
Click to expand...
True; if you don't like the volume shifts on The X Factor, you can always brickwall it yourself. You can't uncompress audio, though.
 
Zare said:
Bass and drums sound great on TXF.

I blame it on Murray and Gers, the sonic failure of rhythm guitars. They should have known you don't just mic up a Marshall cabinet for that big sound. Why didn't they multitrack and stack the rhythm guitars? Maybe because both are not studio savvy and like to just "play it out".

Harris can't do the guitar sound that's obvious from all the 90's albums bar Birch's last work. To say entire thing is on him it's not fair.

Murray and Gers don't get enough credit for sounding that weak on album and that strong live.
Click to expand...

Spot on, and ever since as well (and maybe ever since Janick has been in the band). Adrian's tone is better than their's but too processed for my tastes, but the two of them have atrocious rhythm guitar sounds. It's not even an old school sound, just bad.
 
Midnight said:
That's odd - I never noticed any dramatic volume swings on those albums. The main problem I have with them is how muddy they are.


True; if you don't like the volume shifts on The X Factor, you can always brickwall it yourself. You can't uncompress audio, though.
Click to expand...

And you don't need to make a permanent brickwall copy. Just enable the compressor ad hoc. Every phone's DSP has it, find an application that controls it. Crank it up if the album sounds weak. On phones especially in ear I want it to be loud, but on a big system dynamics is preffered anyway.

srfc said:
Adrian's tone is better than their's but too processed for my tastes, but the two of them have atrocious rhythm guitar sounds. It's not even an old school sound, just bad.
Click to expand...

He already had a big tone even before meeting Roy Z. When he left a lot of people feel that he wanted the AOR guitar polish in Maiden but I think he was simply aware that big metal without big guitar simply won't work.

Also, Shirley said that Maiden's heavy gallop is the combo of three of them playing together. It sounds great because it merges the heaviness of the layered guitars with the definition and livelyness of an individually played guitar track. Note that's a 1999- Maiden only thing. Before that, even when Smith was still in the band, the absolutely most prominent rhythm guitar was actually played by Steve Harris. It is the genius of Martin Birch that managed to integrate that insane bass sound and attack with the distortion of the electric guitars.
 
Zare said:
TXF is a honest, fuck you type of an affair from a band that has 0 pretentions of being accessible.
Firepower is hiring young people and using super production to make an old band feel powerful again.
Click to expand...
I’ll take extremely well-executed music with mild ambitions over poorly-executed music with grand but failed ambitions any day of the week.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top