If Eternity Should Fail

How good is If Eternity Should Fail on a scale of 1-10?


  • Total voters
    23
What a song! I think it's my favourite from the album and it's on its way to the top 10 reunion tracks. I liked it so much that I listened to it about 5 times and I'm not doing it anymore for now, because I'm afraid of getting used to it ;) The sensation of "holy shit, I'm listening to the new Maiden album and it sounds good" was so strong when I was listening to it, that I want to associate it with this song for as long as possible.

I have to admit it caught me off guard because I imagined it to be completely different when I read pieces of information about it. Initially some were saying it's Maiden's heaviest song ever. There is no particular heaviness in my opinion... I'm not sensing any advantage from drop D either. And I expected it to be much faster. Tempo is surprising for an opening track.

The intro is so epic. I love the synthesizer. They should use synths like that more often. It gives me chills when I just imagine how exciting it is going to be to see it opening the show. Oh, man. And these initial bluesy vocals are so cool.

When the proper song kicked in I thought it's kind of strange for an opener... It's the calmest one in this Maiden era and there is something badass about it! The verse is brilliant, Bruce delivers fantastic lines in a comfortable register and the marching guitars sound great. Melodies are superb as well. The transition from verse to pre-chorus sounds amazing. The chorus is not as epic as I would like it to be, but still it does justice to the song. Faster part is ok, but the little thing at 6:00 is really unnecessary and quite silly.
 
3rd best song on the album for me, behind The Book of Souls and The Great Unknown. Great song, I love the down-tuned guitars, although I was surprised to hear Bruce state that it was their first song in "drop-D", because The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg sounds so much heavier. I thought that was Drop D. Love the intro and especially the sinister outro. All in all, a great opener.
 
No. I had a idea or two, but re-reading the lyrics, I'm not so sure.
 
I think the production has a lot to do with the lack of heaviness. It is a good song whatsoever.
 
Great song. Very powerful, great chorus, great vocals. I like the spoken outro with the acoustic guitar, but I wish it was done without the vocal-effects (Book of Thel/Paschendale-kind of thing). The question whether it was not actually co-written by Roy Z is still open.

Now I'm going to have to work out where I read it, but I'm sure I read that another song couldn't be used because it was co-written by Roy Z, thus implying that he wasn't involved in Eternity at all.
 
As far as I know Roy was at least involved in the demo, which was already finished with guitars, bass, drums, vocals - and which maiden "copied". So, Roy was involved. And really, the guitars maybe less "riffy" than Roy's style, but the drop-d tuning, the type of chords and how they progress... Just has a Roy-aura to it, don't you think? And it doesn't sound like Bruce wrote it on the piano...
I think there have to be reasons for crediting only Bruce. I don't know... He could just hum his ideas to Roy and he would just play them. Bruce has worked with instrumentalist for many years, so I think he has ways of communicating his ideas to them. Bruce clearly said he had about 4 songs for new solo album, but they were only allowed to use IESF, because there was no creative involvement by Roy. I don't see any reasons to not believe that.

PS. Powerslave is a similar case. Only Bruce was credited, but I don't see any reason for not crediting it as Dickinson/Smith (or else) if that would be the just thing to do.

PS2. Maybe "Roy-aura" results from Bruce's direction? :)
 
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I'd be curious to hear Gk1's opinion.

Hey man. Bruce said that it was just him behind the song. However he also said that Steve wanted the song to be longer and so he had to add one more verse.Of course the demo guitars were all played by Roy Z. Not sure whether e.g Bruce played all parts of Revelations and Powerslave to the rest of the band....but the same process must have been followed here.Hoever IESF is not really following Roy Z writing style. And once more Kevin managed to make a heavy song sound like pop music.
 
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Travis, in a chord driven (Maiden) music world this is actually quite a complex song! :)
 
Probably the Bruce-iest (and by that I mean Bruce Dickinson the solo band) Maiden song so far. It reminds me of a certain Bruce song, but can't really recall which one... Solo-not-solo section is totally AoB/CW though. Chorus is immense. Can easily imagine them playing this one live with Bruce letting the audience sing the "if eternity should fail" part :)
This one was one of my favorites on the first listen, now it's fallen down the pecking order a bit, but it's still pretty awesome. What's drop D?
 
[QUOTE="Srogyy, post: 542162, member: 10006]. Bruce clearly said he had about 4 songs for new solo album, but they were only allowed to use IESF, because there was no creative involvement by Roy.[/QUOTE]
Source please. @Srogyy
 
because there was no creative involvement by Roy.
Source please.

The first Eddie Trunk interview from last week (i.e. not the one from Times Square NY, but the other one from the studio).

Edit: The quote function seems not to be working properly.
 
That's me on a tablet fucking something up. I heard that interview but must have missed that part, cheers.

Was the TSquare interview good?
 
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