If you could pick just one of these album-"sets", which one?

Which albums?

  • "No Prayer For The Dying", "Fear Of The Dark", "The X-Factor" & "Virtual XI"

    Votes: 4 12.5%

  • "Brave New World", "Dance Of Death" & "A Matter Of Life And Death"

    Votes: 28 87.5%
  • Total voters
    32
Forostar

Forostar

Ancient Mariner
If you could pick just one of these album-"sets", to own in your collection, which one would it be?

option 1:
Maiden's four studio albums of the nineties:
"No Prayer For The Dying", "Fear Of The Dark", "The X-Factor" & "Virtual XI"

option 2:
Maiden's three 21st century studio albums, up til now:
"Brave New World", "Dance Of Death" & "A Matter Of Life And Death"


Please do tell why you prefer one of these packages! :)
 
I don't think there is much competition here. The last three albums in my opinion have all been outstanding. Brave New World was indeed a new world with the return of Adrian and Bruce and a six piece line up. Great heavy sound, love the opener, a typical Smith/Dickinson composition in the vein of 2 Mins to Midnight and Moonchild. The title track is class and Blood Brothers is the best ballady/prog epic Harris will EVER write. Dance of Death was a heavily Smith influenced album and has some great tracks, notably Paschen-fucking-dale and Journeyman. AMOLAD is in my opnion the finest album ever recorded. Not a weak track on there, it's a blitzing powerhouse of a record that deserved to be played in full on the tour.

Compared to that the 90's offerings were weaker, lacking in direction and disjointed. Although you still pick out some awesome tracks, FOTD, The Clansman to name two, they just arent as good collectively.

A harder choice would have been the "Golden Era" package : Piece of Mind, Powerslave, Somewhere in Time, and Seventh Son versus the last three albums...Hmmm.....................
 
The latter, by a mile. I think the average number of really great songs on the 90's albums is far behind the one of the most recent ones.

Brave New World and AMOLAD are my two definitive favorite albums since 7th Son - and the only 90's album I think is really good is The X Factor (by really good I don't mean good as in Powerslave, but good as in that - bah, takes too long. See the General Albums Rating thread). There is so much more excitement in the most recent albums - the band sounds like they are enjoying playing. Besides this, I really don't like Bruce's singing style on the two albums he was part of in the 90s. From Brave New World and onwards we have gotten the old Bruce back (and now he's even more consistent live, it seems, but that's not relevant here).

And even though I wrote a lot of positive stuff about Janick in that other thread, I still think Maiden is better with Adrian Smith than without Adrian Smith. Both as a guitarist and a songwriter he is great. Janick was refreshing when he entered the band, but so was Adrian when returning.

So give me the albums with the three-guitar lineup any day.
 
I'd take the latter set. I don't hate the first, one of my favs, Sign Of The Cross is in it, but I feel the musical evolution and complexity of the newer album really stands out and very consistent.
 
Well, here some opposition from my side.  I don't even know for sure which set I would choose.
I grew up with Maiden in the nineties, that differs a lot, I guess.

Besides, I find Dance of Death disappointing, containing perhaps even more filler than the average 90s album. That leaves 2 great albums versus at least 3 pretty nice ones, of which one is excellent (TXF).

To be continued....  ;)
 
The 2000s set, without doubt.  A Matter of Life and Death was my first "new" Maiden album to come out when I was a fan, and it's also in my opinion their greatest album.  Dance of Death and Brave New World are also great.  Fear of the Dark and Virtual XI don't stand up to scrutiny with the exception of three songs from both. (Be Quick, Afraid to Shoot Strangers, Fear of the Dark, The Clansman, Futureal, and Como Estais Amigos) No Prayer for the Dying is decent, and only The X Factor is the level of the 2000s material.  The X Factor is better than Brave New World and Dance of Death, but even it is not quite the equal of AMOLAD. 

Add to this that Maiden are touring more and better than during the 90s, their excellent live albums and videos from the decade, as well as them having easily their best line-up so far, and the 90s are clearly worse than the 2000s.  In my opinion, of course. :)
 
The reunion albums win, hands down. After many years of saying Piece Of Mind is my favorite, I have to face the facts of the new century and update my preferences: Brave New World is easily Maiden's best album, ever. AMOLAD isn't far behind that. And of course, my mantra:

Paschenfuckingdale! I gotta say it again: Paschenfuckingdale! Sayitwithmebrother: Paschenfuckingdale! Can I get an amen!

Now don't get me wrong - the Blaze albums were very good and FotD, though not up there with the rest, has a bunch of great songs. (More than most people would say - I think FotD is underrated by many.) NPFTD is a bad album with mostly bad songs, but it's not the badness of NPFTD which makes this set lose - it's the awesomeness of BNW and AMOLAD that makes the second set win.

The only three-album set which beats the reunion albums is The Number Of The Beast - Piece Of Mind - Powerslave.
 
Back in the Village said:
A harder choice would have been the "Golden Era" package : Piece of Mind, Powerslave, Somewhere in Time, and Seventh Son versus the last three albums...Hmmm.....................
Click to expand...

I thought that would be an easier choice to be honest.

@Invader: thanks for contributing but this topic is purely about chosing which studio albums you prefer to own, nothing else.  (I know your choice will stay the same, but I still wanted to point that out). ;)
 
very very easy question....
"Brave New World" best way to start the new millenium
"Dance Of Death"  first studio album I listened
""A Matter Of Life And Death" first live release album I got (Im a IM fan since 2004)
 
Forostar said:
@Invader: thanks for contributing but this topic is purely about chosing which studio albums you prefer to own, nothing else.  (I know your choice will stay the same, but I still wanted to point that out). ;)
Click to expand...

I knew that, but I just wanted to point out the other factors too, because they just reinforced my personal opinion. :)
 
21st century ones...three guitar thing that works like a charm, more progressive songs than in '90s, better quality of songs overall, Adrian and Bruce back, a lot of reasons.
 
Sorry, Forostar, but I think this is a fairly easy call, too.  I understand why you might think otherwise -- one can't underestimate the influence of growing up with the 90s albums.  But those albums are clearly inferior to the rest of Iron Maiden's catalog.  By comparison, DoD gave us Paschendale, and BNW and AMOLAD are uniformly awesome.  I rarely listen to any of the 90s stuff -- a few tracks from The X Factor, and one or two each from the others.  Even the original track of Fear of the Dark pales in comparison to the stirring live version on Rock in Rio. 
 
I seriously find the choice difficult, simply because of the big amount of good songs made in the nineties. Can't help it that others don't find the quality/atmosphere/power/energy....fill in here... in all those tracks.

Apart from maybe two or three exceptions, I find the lesser tracks from this era at least as good and in some cases even better than the lesser tracks on (esp.) Dance of Death and Brave New World.

Really, my Maiden collection would feel empty without e.g. "Afraid to Shoot Strangers", "Sign of the Cross", "The Unbeliever", "Lightning Strikes Twice", "Fates Warning", "No Prayer For The Dying", "Mother Russia", "Judas Be My Guide", "Childhood's End", "The Fugitive", "Public Enema Number One", "The Clansman", "Be Quick Or Be Dead", "Fear of the Dark", "Man On The Edge", "Fortunes of War", "2 AM", "The Educated Fool", "Tailgunner", "Blood On The World's Hands", "Futureal", the list goes on..... Can you imagine a setlist like that? Holy cow!  Well, those songs mean as much to me as all the tracks you guys have mentioned, or in some cases even more.

I admit: AMOLAD is full of good tracks (apart from the opener), Brave New World has about 6 tracks of the same level, but Dance of Death?

Dance of Death has in my humble opinion only 3 memorable tracks, each by a different guitarist. The title track by Janick, Rainmaker by Dave and Paschendale by Adrian. The rest consists out of weaker, more simple and at times monotonuous, repetitive and uninspired material, with hardly any nice catching melodies.

So I guess I'll vote for these 4 nineties albums, instead of only 2 good ones.
 
I"ve said this before, but I was a weak Maiden fan in the 90's.  I bought FOTD and NPFTD, but I kinda lost interest and ability to keep up.  It was DOD that really got me fired up about Maiden again, almost like hearing them for the first time all over again.  Gotta go with the last 3 albums on this poll.
 
Quite an easy choice for me. Brave New World and Dance of Death were the first albums I heard from Iron Maiden and are the reason I have become an avid Maiden fan. Brave New World was the first studio album I bought and hence occupies a special place in my heart. And of course, AMOLAD was the first Limited Edition Iron Maiden thing that I bought like the day it was released in Austria so...no competition really. Many of my favorite songs are on Brave New World and Dance of Death to this day, even after I've listened to all the studio albums.
 
Many people like specific album / era they were introduced to at first. Altrough i wasn't old enough for some serious music preferences when Maiden were in their golden days, i was introduced in mid-90's to their '80s material. When i was done with '80s material, i got into their '90s material, and that was before the reunion.

So i am not subjective in terms of "i got their '90s album as my first record", or i got BNW/DOD/AMOLAD as my first record. What completely got me was the intro riff of Aces High, the start of the tape that my school friend compiled for me. Therefore i have no special attachments to '90s or 21st century material. Or the Di'Anno years.
 
Zare said:
i was introduced in mid-90's to their '80s material. When i was done with '80s material, i got into their '90s material, and that was before the reunion.
Click to expand...

Most people here became a fan since the "reunion era", since the "golden years", or since the "Blaze years".
I am from the early nineties period (September 1991). I got into all of the Maiden material before FOTD came out.
(More detailed story, this topic. ;))

Zare said:
So i am not subjective in terms of "i got their '90s album as my first record",
Click to expand...

Me neither.
 
I refuse to vote. A year ago, perhaps, I would have undoubtedly said the first one, if only for The X Factor. But to be honest, A Matter Of Life And Death is so close now to X Factor that I'm sometimes in doubt which one I like better.
 
Like Zare, I have no personal attachment to any "era".  After hearing The Wickerman on radio, I asked my brother to d/l Maiden material.  He got it all.  Listening to the songs, I had no idea which songs came from which albums or even that they had three different singers.  There were songs I was attached to early on, some of which I still feel the same way, some of which have dwindled in emotional response. 

Last time I ranked albums, I thought AMOLAD was best, but since then I've been putting BNW ahead.  Depends on the mood.  AMOLAD has more subtlety, while BNW has more energy.  Both are brilliant.  With these two as my top two, the choice is easy for the 2000s.
 
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