Imagining in maiden songs

Mmm...Donuts

Mmm...Donuts

Trooper
Maiden songs essentially tell a story from the start to finish, and the instrumental parts of songs WILL make your mind produce images of the theme.
Some songs can be ambiguous to imagine, for example, when I listen to the Sign Of The Cross, I can't really know what to imagine. ROTAM is an great thing to picture though.

What do you guys like to imagine in any Maiden song you listen? Cmon, I know we have different thoughts on songs. For some reason the imagination goes critical in the solo part, like a climax in For The Greater Good Of God, where I can imagine in the solo starts with a crusade exchanging arrows and artillery in Janick's solo the marching and meeting of armines in the between solo interlude, then a giant clash of arms in Adrian's solo, then finally aftermath of the battle with Dave's solo as the survivors are intercepted.
 
For me, the battle songs do this best.  Of the battle songs, the best imageries for me are in The Trooper, Paschendale, Montsegur (ok, not 100% battle song, but whatever), Aces High, Invaders, The Longest Day, and Alexander the Great (of great armies marching; again, not really a battle song).

Some other great imagery:
Childhood's End
Blood on the World's Hands
Fear of the Dark
Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Killers
Hallowed Be Thy Name (though I rarely think about it because the music is so good  :p )
Fortunes of War (actually, it more brings thoughts into my head than images)
The Legacy
Murders in the Rue Morgue
 
Aces High is a must.  The whammied harmonics Adrian does in the chorus perfectly summons up the image of a Me-109 or Spitfire taking a nose-dive, and the tremolo picking in Dave's solo sounds like Browning machine-gun fire.  Other great songs are Alexander (marching armies...duh) and Genghis Khan/The Trooper (both summon up images of mounted armies sweeping across the battlefield).  Paschendale is another great tune for musical imagery, from the morse-code hi-hat intro, to the haunting flare-like tapping intro, to the blitzkrieg assault of the three-note power chords during the interludes.  Nothing could bring to mind the image of a battlefield more.  I'll post others as I think of them.
 
I also want to stress what other people think of Sign Of The Cross. It's hard to find a definite imagination, one time it brought my mind to haunted house, then to a holocaust of sorts, sometimes referring to Joan of Arc or something.
 
nice topic !!

well the first song that came to my mind is the Legacy
...I started listening to AMOLAD some days before its release, so I didn't had any lyrics to read
-this can be a great imagination exercise for first listens !! -just listen, not read 

well I thought it was a song somehow about fairies !!!
...with this Celtic like intro
and lyrics -that I could understand- like
...tell tale of the men all dressed in black
that most of them not coming back...

or like :
you lie in your death bed now but what did you bring to the table
      [...]
in the following part I couldn't understand what Bruce was singing
so I had a stong image of Druides gathering and fairies dance
particulary the artwork of Jethro Tull's Stand up
and Magnum's On a Storyteller's night came to my mind:

left to all our golden sons
all to pick up on the peace
you could have given all of them
a little chance... at least

take the world to a better place
given them all just a little hope
just think what a legacy
you now... will leave

stand_up.jpg


storytellersnight.jpg

 
also in the part :
we live in an uncertain world
fear understanding and ignorance
is leading to death

for me it was sounding like :
we live in an uncertain world
fear understanding and England
is leaded to death
:bigsmile:

..so I was very curious when the album released to see the lyrics of that song
and how it could lyrics about war could cohabit with fairy tales and dying Englands !

[...]

sign of the cross ? monks, monasteries, and the forbidden bibliotheque of the Name of the Rose
 
another thing that makes Maiden such a great band! Its not just the lyrics that tell a story.

The longest day is very good in that respect, the instremental parts are almost like a soundtrack to a film. Nicko's drumming after "the cliffs erupt in flame" give a very clear image too

Pachendale is very good in this respect too...the main heavy guitar riff could be shells landing, the mid part of the song with the solo's is the best for imagery i find though. After "rush of blood and over we go" the single guitar stumming and then the solo's..its easy to imagine the group of soldiers climbing the trench to run to their deaths. Then Bruce comes back in with the "Blood is falling like the rain" bit...it gives the image of the soldier seeing all the death and waiting for his own...then more solo's as he runs forward. Then back to Bruce who desribes the soldiers final moments. During this part it the guitars seem to play harder, with the line "running blind as i hold my breath" it seems like the guy is just well, running blind with gritted teeth..forcing himself to run at the gunfire.

Best i can decribe but that whole passage gives very vivid images.

Aces High always sounded like a dogfight to me, almost cat and mouse as the pilots try to get a shot on eachother. Tailgunner is a similar..ish subject and it always made me think of planes soaring accross the sky, diving, banking and all that...the intro is very good.


Face in the sand also, i'm not too sure what its about but the combination of the music and the lyrics make it feel  quite tense and like something is going to happen unless something changes..like we are on the brink of something..its hard to describe though
 
I don't know if I imagine anything specific other than perhaps what might go on subconsciously when I hear the songs these days, but when I was younger I had vivid images of some guy waiting in his cell, somebody sitting at the window staring at the rain, or women in uniform :halo: and other lyrics-driven images. The music itself does obviously create certain atmospheres and inspire certain emotional reactions, but I don't know if that counts as imaging.

Interesting topic though.
 
Excellent topic Donuts...

I imagine many songs... three that come to mind are:
1. Assassin
2. The Nomad
3. For the Greater Good of God

1.  I imagine an assassin looking through his telescope, sweating, trigger finger itching.  I often think back to the Matrix movie when agent Smith is examining the humans and judgin how "stinky and sweaty" they are.  It is weird, but it works for me.

2.  I've mentioned this one under the song thread. 

3.  During the solos I imagine a factory making guns.  The wheels and gear of the machines move with the music. 

There is much more I could say... but these are some of the most consistent, most powerful images.
 
The Legacy is one that brings very vivid images to my mind. Particularly during the instrumental parts of the intro, I imagine masses of people gathering in the streets, in coffee houses or restaurants in front of a TV screen expecting to hear 'big news' someone announced. I like to think of it as a news anchor announcing the death of the people's dictator, which triggers huge cheering from the people (during the loud electric parts).
 
Montségur gives me some very clear images in my head.  I have no idea what the actual fortress of Montsegur was like, but the song makes me imagine a powerful fortress built straight into a cliff side, with high and strong walls.  I can imagine huge hordes of catholic troops, with the vastly outnumbered cathars defending the walls against a massive siege.  The image of bloodshed, fire, and death is particularly strong in the song.  The instrumental part in the middle gives me images of hordes of catholics assaulting the walls with siege ladders and the gates with battering rams.  It basically makes me imagine a battle.  Then at the end of the song after the singing I can imagine the catholics finally overrunning the walls and the last cathars falling.
 
Powerslave is another one, fellas! The main riff looks like priests trying to chant stuff to the god of death and such, as the pharaoh makes his last stand to live with magic. The chorus can make me see about the pharaoh screaming at defiance at why his life has such to end. The solos start with me imagining the pharaoh reminiscing his doings then encountering the grim reaper, reaching his hand to take the soul. During Adrian's mind ripping solo showing a flash of light as the pharaoh crosses death's door. Dave's solo shows the pharaoh finally going to his knees and slumping to the ground in a thud after a tunnel of light. Pretty good stuff.

Does anyone have the same thing of Childhood's End? The main riff is absolutely image inducing! Each repetition of the riff shows different scenes of famine, hunger, disease, lonely souls. The emotion is so great!

Fear Of The Dark, yeah! To me, the imagining isn't some sort of morbid scene, it's more of a guy with extreme phobia, and the main riff show him running from imaginary monsters, while the instrumental part draws him to encountering things, for example eddie the tree monster, and then it's like he's surrounded by them. But the song is lighthearted, almost like a comedy/horror mix, but nothing gory.
 
The one thing I always get with Dance of Death is actually finding myself in the Everglades and living out the story of the song.

Thoughts of my father - cheesy, I know - come to mind when listening to Blood Brothers. Which can be more poignant at times as I have a very fragile relationship with him at the moment.

A lot of these thoughts, I feel, are not only be down to the very good lyrics, but the way Bruce delivers the story.
 
Well, instead of images, songs usually generate miscellaneous feelings and emotions in me. One exception maybe - or two. The Nomad creates images of vast plains, especially the instrumental part, images of travelling and adventure. The second might be Paschendale with images of warfare popping into my mind.

With Sign of the Cross, my favourite, it is like feelings of urgency, danger - the beginning of the instrumental part, then comes soloing part which sounds more optimistic, maybe relieving. But no specific images. You know, English is not my native, so when I'm not concentrated on lyrics, I do not get them, so only the music plays with my mind, which does not help create many images.
 
For me the war-songs are perhaps the best in terms of creating imagery. Especially since the music is really focused on portraying certain things. Nicko's drums on Longest Day and Paschendale are great for setting the mood. Obviously the easiest songs are those that are narrative, as many of Maiden's songs are.

I think the one besides Paschendale that always gets my imagination going is Hallowed. I can see the cell before me, and the walk out to the gallows and so on.

That said, most Maiden songs give me some kind of mental visual-experience. Since most are narrative. The only ones that don't are songs that are heavy on the metaphysic-ness, like Revelations, Sign Of The Cross etc. And for some odd reason, a lot of stuff from the early albums. Notable exceptions being Killers, Phantom and Charlotte :p But a lot of those lyrics kind of melt away for me. Might be because it wasn't until NOTB that the song-writing really came into it's own in terms of lyrics.
 
Sign of the Cross, conversely, is one of Maiden's most poignant for me.  I really...feel it, when you hear Blaze singing.  It's an intense feeling.  I have gone out into a rain storm to listen to that song on my iPod, watching lightning strike and feeling hot rain splash into my face.  Intense.
 
LooseCannon said:
Sign of the Cross, conversely, is one of Maiden's most poignant for me.  I really...feel it, when you hear Blaze singing.  It's an intense feeling.  I have gone out into a rain storm to listen to that song on my iPod, watching lightning strike and feeling hot rain splash into my face.  Intense.
Click to expand...

Touche' .
Sign of the Cross an instrumental part I would like to call the Maiden climax, which also appears in ROTAM

Medium tempo part
Ominous slow part
Dramatic slow part
Intense pre solo riff
Damn Fine Solos
Calming descending riff

Those parts of Sign Of The Cross makes you think of a lot of things. Sometimes I imagine a possessed castle that's purified, an exorcisim or even poignant pictures of the deadly Spanish Inquisition. But as of now, the Inquisition imagination prevails in my mind.All these beautiful aspects combine to create my favorite Iron Maiden song.
 
I've always dreamt in colour, so I don't really understand the whole black & white thing. I guess some people do dream in black & white since it's such an established concept. Though I have  feeling that in Dream of Mirrors it's more to do with fitting in lyrically than how Steve Harris dreams :p
 
It has struck me that to suggest that, as the song says, to only dream in black and white, to save me from myself may mean that to dream in this way is to have a structured dream and be very much in control of it - perhaps. :D
 
The lyrics and feel of that song REEEEEEEEKS of 7th Son, and I wouldn't mind if that song was placed in that album.
Anyways, the lyrics can suggest an abstract feeling,


      I get up put on the light, dreading the oncoming night
      Scared to fall asleep and dream the dream again
      Nothing that I contemplate, nothing that I can compare
      To letting loose the demons deep inside my head

It's like he's battling his inner demons, or some thing's driving him nuts and he's struggling to save himself.



      Lost – In a dream of mirrors,
      Lost – In a paradox
      Lost – And time is spinning,
      Lost – A nightmare I retrace

      Lost – A hell that I revisit,
      Lost – Another time and place
      Lost – A parallel existence,
      Lost – A nightmare I retrace

This might be related to "Deja Vu", or that his life has become a living hell that he cannot distinguish reality and dreams anymore, and wants solace.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top