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With Dance of Death out of the way, Iron Maiden decided to stop experimenting with their sound and put out a normal album with their six-piece line-up. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to A Matter of Life and Death.

If ever there was an album you could call a "fortress", this is it. The material is all packed together well, though, unlike the previous albums, the songs are more interesting because not all of them are masterpieces. Song by song:
  • "Different World" is the perfect opener to the album. Shorter than the rest of the songs and more of a classic rocker than the other material here, it takes the "Wildest Dreams" approach to opening an album and the "Rainmaker" approach to assembling a song together, and ends up being a masterpiece of a song. I love it.
  • "These Colours Don't Run" is perhaps the least outstanding of the songs. It's a good song, but it's just merely foreplay for the rest of the war material to come up.
  • A quiet opening to what is definitely one of the heaviest songs Maiden have ever released, "Brighter Than A Thousand Suns" moves in like an enormous ship sailing into the harbor. And I mean enormous. It may be the shortest epic on the album, but it's like an airplane carrier if "For The Greater Good Of God" is an oil tanker. This song is a behemoth. Heavy as all fuck, Bruce sounds vicious, and all-told it's a great song. Though there are a few parts where it sounds like Bruce isn't singing to the music, but that's a minor thing. Monster song.
  • "The Pilgrim" used to be my least favorite song on the album, but then I fell in love with its intro riff. I really enjoyed the entire song tonight, actually, every piece of it is nice and compact. Good short song among a bunch of long ones.
  • "The Longest Day" starts relatively quietly, as it builds up, re-telling the events of D-Day before they hit the beach. With a crash the cliffs erupt, the beach is overrun, and the "sliding we go" bit enters. The actual chorus, which is nothing but repeating the same line four times, isn't as bad as it has been on previous listens, but as a whole the song seems to escape greatness throughout, settling merely for being "good".
  • Worst song on the album? "Out of the Shadows". Not that it's actually bad or anything, but it's nothing special. Bruce sounds absolutely bored throughout. Instead of throwing himself into it, he's merely singing. It's the only time he's ever really done this. In his quiet voice he sounds like he's just doing it to get it over with, and in his high parts, while better, it's not the best nonetheless. By the end of the song I'm tired of the chorus, anyhow. Not a bad song but the weakest of the reunion era thus far into the discography.
  • Luckily, from "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg" on to the end, every song is a great one. This monster of a single is awesome, heavy, has great singing and great lyrics. Also a really nice backstory from Maiden.
  • "For The Greater Good Of God" is often criticized for its repetitiveness, and I've also been quite vocal about it, but honestly tonight I thought it was perfect. The quiet, thoughtful intro, to the verses, to the pre-choruses, to the actual chorus, to the instrumental, and the incredible outro - one of Maiden's finest moments - this song is awesome.
  • "Lord of Light" first grabbed me with its awesome chorus, but the whole thing is great too. It's another really heavy song, with some great verses and, as I said, an incredible chorus.
  • Finally, the album winds-down and wraps-up with an absolute masterpiece, "The Legacy". Saving the best for last... wow, Janick, wow. I've written an entire "essay" type post on it, so read that, but yes, this is one of the best Maiden songs ever. One of my all-time favorites. Perfect ending to a great album, perfect song in its own right. I love it, its lyrics, its music, everything. Perfection.
While, again, the production isn't the best, it doesn't bring down the material. I don't think that A Matter of Life and Death is as good as Brave New World or Dance of Death, but it is a very strong album. Then again, what Maiden album isn't? Great album, great band.
 
This morning I was supposed to be taught how to do something at work by someone from my office today. But that someone was prevented due to a medical emergency, and the only other person who could teach me was a woman from the Macedonian branch. So I've been on the phone for ~30 minutes and I think I understood 2 out of every 10 words she said. FML

In the end I just said I understood everything and will figure it out on my own.
 
The Final Frontier is a good album, but it's not perfect. Most of its tracks are strong, but they're less good / memorable than most Maiden songs. The production is decent, but this is probably the worst album vocally for Dickinson. He really does not sound all that great.

Except on "The Talisman", which is great as a whole and I think the best song on here. "El Dorado" is also great, "Satellite 15" is a bit overlong but "The Final Frontier" is such a cool jam it makes up for it. "Mother of Mercy" is cool, the guitars remind me of Death; "Coming Home" perfected the ballad style "Out of the Shadows" was striving for; "The Alchemist" is fun; and "Isle of Avalon", at one point my least favorite song on the album, is actually really nice.

"Starblind" is, well, "Starblind". I definitely like it better than I have in past. I've also underestimated "When The Wild Wind Blows", it's a really great Harris epic closer. The only "failure" of this album is "The Man Who Would Be King", which has a great chorus, a decent beginning and ending, and a weird but cool solo, but it falls flat in the verses, which feel like they were taking from WTWWB and sped up. Shame.

Overall, a strong album, but as I said, the material isn't as good as stuff from literally every other album. I think it's better than Killers, and that's probably it. But an enjoyable if long listen, certainly.
 
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