IRON MAIDEN REFERENDUM 2020: Results -> Hallowed Be Thy Name wins for the 5th time!

Are you satisfied with the results?

  • Total voters
    18
The Metal Ballads playlist that included Wasting Love is really popular, it has over 700 000 followers. The list got updated, and now instead of Wasting Love, Journeyman and No Prayer for the Dying are included.

Wasting Love is a great song btw.
 
I was only half serious. When I started listening to Maiden (through YouTube, didn't use Spotify yet), I saw the song had a lot of views so I assumed it's one of their hits. It took me getting into the whole catalogue and reading fan opinions to realize it's not the same case as Aces High, TNOTB etc... But I still didn't get why people said Wasting Love "shouldn't be in the top 10". Why is a song becoming popular through playlists so different than it exploding on MTV or something? Why is only knowing Wasting Love different than only knowing Run to the Hills.
Surely thousands and thousands of other old songs got popular silently with the Internet. The song doesn't seem out of place to me next to all the 80's hits.
 
I like raspy Bruce on Tattooed Millionaire, it fits the material. Sometimes it works on No Prayer. Otherwise, meh.
 
I've railed against Fear of the Dark many times over the years here, but I want to contribute a bit more than simply saying that this is the worst Maiden album and the only one I'd rate lower than a 6.

My biggest takeaway on this listen is that the reason this album doesn't work is that it has no cohesion or thematic focus. No Prayer For the Dying, for all its flaws, is consistent in its attempt to be a meat and potatoes Metal album. The band is going back to their roots, ditching the synths, fine. It's usually a fool's errand to try and recapture an old vibe, but they had a clear goal in mind with that album and saw it through. With Fear of the Dark, it feels like the band (read: Steve) is caught between several different approaches. Do they continue the meat and potatoes style of No Prayer? Bruce's vocal style and songs like Be Quick Or Be Dead and The Fugitive say yes. But then the production doesn't have the same rawness. The synths are back, albeit now more in the background. The drums have this really bad early 90s reverb sound.

There is also a clear reaction to the success of Bring Your Daughter as a single, even though it was a completely manufactured hit. Songs like From Here To Eternity and Chains of Misery, with the gang vocals and juvenile lyrics, seem to clearly point toward a more commercial direction than what we heard on the last album. These are singalong songs. Then you have Wasting Love, an obvious attempt at cashing in on the ballads craze.

To make things more jarring, you then have this pull back toward the progressive side of late 80s Maiden. Afraid To Shoot Strangers and Fear of the Dark are longish songs with some more dynamic parts, but they don't go quite as far as the epics of the past. There isn't as much instrumental awesomeness. What counts as the closest thing to an "epic" on an early 90s Maiden album (Afraid To Shoot Strangers) would be seen as a short rocker on an album like AMOLAD.

So what do you get in the end? A somewhat aimless album by a band that is in desperate need of change. That change came and, while it was probably difficult at the time, it helped the band tremendously in the long term.

There are only a few songs I genuinely like on the album. Judas Be My Guide is awesome. Great early 90s styled Metal track. Mind boggling that it is basically buried on the album. Afraid To Shoot Strangers is easily the best song and probably the only thing that I would really go out of my way for. Wasting Love has its moments. I actually don't mind Fear Is the Key. It's not great but I don't hate it with the passion others have for it. I don't really like Fear Of the Dark, the studio version is weak and it only works for having live energy. Be Quick Or Be Dead has the energy but it lacks an interesting hook or riff. It's kinda boring musically. I want Strangers and Judas promoted, after that I don't care.
 
There is something about this album. I don't know exactly what that something is, but whenever I listen to this album my opinions change.

When I first heard Fear of the Dark, I loved songs like Chains of Misery and From Here to Eternity. I didn't really understand The Fugitive or Childhood's End or Judas Be My Guide. That has changed. To echo a little bit of what @Mosh said but spin it slightly more positively, this is Iron Maiden's riskiest album. There is certainly no theme and no sonic consistency, but the musical experimentation happening here is greater than on any single other Maiden record. This also makes FOTD their most desperate record. The band (Steve) is literally throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks, and some if it does!

You've got classic Maiden rockers that sound like the 90s (Judas, Be Quick), you've got proggier, darker stuff (AFTSS, FOTD, Fugitive, Childhood), you've got bluesy, gritty and grimy rock 'n' roll tracks (FETE, Chains, Warrior), you've got a power ballad (Wasting Love), and you've got some straight up misfires (Apparition, FITK). I personally think the desperate experimentation here is exciting, because we ended up with some songs (that I classify as a 9 or 10/10) that classic (or reunion) Maiden would never record, such as Childhood's End, Wasting Love, and The Fugitive. There are some crazy bass and guitar (and, occasionally, drum) fills that resemble Dream Theater (or some othersuch prog metal band). I am firmly in the camp that thinks songs like Childhood's End, Wasting Love, and The Fugitive are vastly underrated.

And yet, I'm voting for:

Breeg
Be Quick
Eternity
Fear Is The Key (holy fucking Dio this song is a mess, that vocal bridge is absolutely worse than anything Blaze ever did)
Fugitive (I love it, but it's not top tier)
Chains
Apparition (a musical abortion)
Weekend Warrior (musical abortion redux)
 
Honestly I think that Fear of the Dark is a great, very underrated album. The only thing that holds it back is its length and Bruce's somewhat lackluster performance.
 
I can’t see this as the riskiest album when it’s followed by X Factor. If anything, it sounds like the band desperately trying to hold on.
 
Mosh said:
I can’t see this as the riskiest album when it’s followed by X Factor. If anything, it sounds like the band desperately trying to hold on.
Click to expand...
I don’t think it’s risky, or desperate, I think it’s a band that doesn’t really know what it wants to be and therefore indulged each member in whatever direction they were going. It was produced well from a sound perspective, but not from the perspective of cohesiveness and centredness. It’s like a last-days Beatles album in the sense that each member was doing his own thing, with little regard to the others, with some of it working really well and some of it missing utterly.

I love Jan and what he has brought to the band over the years, but here his songwriting is the principal problem: he simply hasn’t found his footing within the group yet; his contributions are alien to Maiden, a little jarring. At times a little too off-putting and medieval (Fear is the Key, The Apparition), at times a little too trite and commercial (Wasting Love, Weekend Warrior). And the fact that these awkward songs are what is taking the place of the easy cool of Adrian’s typical contribution amplifies the awkwardness.

Bruce was lost and focused on trying to be something different than who he was. His performance suffered and his songwriting was rote - he was looking backwards, like on his solo album. And his heart wasn’t really in it.

(The lone exception to both above paragraphs being Be Quick, where the raspy vocal stylings worked and Jan’s contribution brought a new element that fit. That‘s a killer metal track)

The other songwriters pulled their weight. Judas is one of Davey’s best, and Chains isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be - it’s a routine track on par with the Twilight Zones and Sun and Steels that fill out the bottom of many Maiden albums. And Steve was in fine form: Afraid and Fear of the Dark are classic Harris tracks, Childhood‘s End is fresh, the Fugitive is interesting and Eternity is a fun single that gets ripped for its superficial elements (gang vocals, bad 90s video) while its actual substance (manic energy, catchy bass riff, killer solo) get ignored.
 
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