Maiden albums you can’t get into?

I pulled up this forum this morning at work and I glanced at this topic and I decided to take a different tact. Somehow the meaning of the topic name got me in a different way. I, Chaos Paint, cannot squeeze my tight supple body into any of Iron Maiden albums. I have them on vinyl and while they are larger, they are still too small. I can maybe jam one of my feet into an open vinyl sleeve, or pull some mustache hairs through the "vinyl hole" as it's called.

Also every Maiden album has great songs I love them all don't kill my dreams.
 
Oh there are some that I'd skip. I just don't honestly think Maiden writes stuff just for the sake of beefing up an album.
 
Brigantium said:
Oh there are some that I'd skip. I just don't honestly think Maiden writes stuff just for the sake of beefing up an album.
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It might be the case since 1990 or 1992, though, and the advent of the CD standard. There was no way the record label would let them (or any other band) release an album clocking around 50' long while what they wanted to sell was a support able to bear 75' then 80' (Virtual XI being the exception, at 54').
However, this must have to do with the fact Maiden tends to use everything they have written and release it on the album, instead of keeping the (allegedly) improvable tracks and rework them for a later release. The list of the latter may vary according to every one of us, but I still can't digest how offhandedly the end of the solo segment in "The Great Unknown" has been dealt with, for instance (i.e let's just stop and resume with the initial riff without bothering about any kind of transition).
 
srfc said:
I don't think so, they had a spare track for the Number of the Beast that they had to leave off the album.
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If I'm remembering my sources correctly, Invaders is just Invaders, it was always the first track. However Steve Harris was more keen to put Total Eclipse on the album and let Gangland be the b-side, but Clive Burr had a hand in writing (if not writing the whole thing, I don't remember) the track so Steve wanted to be inclusive. So Total Eclipse, which he felt was the better track, was left off. Steve was quoted later as saying he felt that it was a mistake.
 
Deep Purple is a band that has a shit ton of filler, as much as I like them, they have albums like the 1973 one that's one big filler in itself. Simply put, they did not want to be in studio, they did not want to make new songs, and they just played the most generic stuff to fulfill the contract.

Generic in filler context, for me, doesn't mean "Iron Maiden's usual tendencies and patterns" it literally means generic. Iron Maiden doesn't do generic. DP truly did generic in a sense that album was filled with colourless and odorless rock and roll and blues, because the band was in shitty state. Iron Maiden is never in a shitty state and would never invest such absurdly low amounts of passion into their product. Because the band members feel they have a commitment between themselves.

AC/DC always does AC/DC usual stuff, but it doesn't sound generic, nor is it a filler, it's AC/DC.
 
chaosapiant said:
If I'm remembering my sources correctly, Invaders is just Invaders, it was always the first track. However Steve Harris was more keen to put Total Eclipse on the album and let Gangland be the b-side, but Clive Burr had a hand in writing (if not writing the whole thing, I don't remember) the track so Steve wanted to be inclusive. So Total Eclipse, which he felt was the better track, was left off. Steve was quoted later as saying he felt that it was a mistake.
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I think you're misremembering it a bit, since Total Eclipse is a Harris/Murray/Burr track. Including it instead of Gangland would've therefore actually been more inclusive and meant that the album would've had writing credits from all members (with Bruce of course not officially being credited with any of his contributions for legal reasons).

What's definitely true however is that he regrets not including Total Eclipse. They even played it live on tour so it was definitely the favorite of the two in the end. What I think is a shame is that the current "official" version of TNOTB doesn't include it, meaning it's poorly available for streaming.
 
Ruflux said:
I think you're misremembering it a bit, since Total Eclipse is a Harris/Murray/Burr track. Including it instead of Gangland would've therefore actually been more inclusive and meant that the album would've had writing credits from all members (with Bruce of course not officially being credited with any of his contributions for legal reasons).

What's definitely true however is that he regrets not including Total Eclipse. They even played it live on tour so it was definitely the favorite of the two in the end. What I think is a shame is that the current "official" version of TNOTB doesn't include it, meaning it's poorly available for streaming.
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I didn't realize Burr helped write Total Eclipse, but he did also help write Gangland and I think he was more insistent about this song being on the album. With them both being Burr tracks though it's hard to say.

I've said it before but, tonally, Total Eclipse does not fit Number of the Beast for me. It sounds a lot like material that would be on Piece of Mind. It's got a slow/fast/slow/fast thing going on that sounds like the blueprint for songs like Revelations, and a "happier" vocal from Bruce as well. It's a weird song to me. I love it on Beast over Hammersmith.
 
chaosapiant said:
I more or less agree with this. There's songs I like more than others, but if I'm listening to an album, there are no tracks that I skip. I like them all to some degree.
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That was my situation until Dance of death.Dont know why,but that album has a sound or something weird.....the choruses out of place....everything is like sad since the third song....and there are 3 really bad songs gates of tomorrow,new frontier,age of innocence.
 
The album I still can't get into no matter how hard I try is TFF. The album kind of feels split between the two halves too--shorter songs up front, and then a bunch of longer epics bringing up the rear, but even most of those I like rather than love.

I had a really hard time with TXF like many here, and back then I had a lot more free time to put in the effort to get into it. Virtual XI was easier, since by then I liked Blaze a lot, and his performance was less drony than what came across in TXF and had more fire (though nowhere near as much fire as he had in the Wolfsbane days). Book of Souls was a bit tough too since it's overlong, patchy, and Bruce strains waaaay too much for my taste, but hey, a lot of people don't seem to hear it even on the latest tours, so maybe I'm wrong. <_<
 
chaosapiant said:
I listened to No Prayer just last night and think it's one of their better 90s albums. I love it. Every song is a good fun banger.
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Perun said:
None. All these albums have been with me for so long that there's nothing short of intimate familiarity with them.

Sometimes I suddenly see a song in new light, but not getting into a Maiden album is a concept foreign to me.
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Totally agree.
 
Ariana said:
Killers. I love listening to everything else.
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Wow. Killers is my all-time favourite Maiden album. But it's my 'gateway' Maiden album, which might be at least partially why I love it so much. A postscript to my original post: I have now finally started to enjoy and appreciate AMOLAD. I should add that I forgot to mention 'No Prayer' originally- I seldom listen to it: sometimes I start to listen to it, then a few songs in, I think to myself why am I listening to this, when I could be listening to one of the many Maiden albums I love.
 
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Flawless Albums
PS
SIT
BNW
AMOLAD

Great albums
POM
SSOASS
TBOS

Good albums
NOTB
DOD

albums with 4 songs or less I like...
IM
Killers
NPFTD
FOTD
TXF
albums with 2 songs or less I like...
TFF
VXI

The Final Frontier and Virtual XI were the 2 most difficult to get into.... Dance of Death took awhile too but after listening for a week, I started liking it..
 
I think that it's interesting how some people who like AMOLAD find TFF bad or hard to get into. Sure, the albums have a slightly different sound and TFF has some experimental stuff on it but at the end of the day, the albums are songwriting- and performance-wise pretty similar. At least in my opinion. I personally love both albums.
 
I can't say dislike.But Dance of Death was the most dissapointing record to me...I expected the same awesome record that Brave New World meant to me.
Fear of the dark was the same feeling as Brave new world. The expectation. What would could come after NPFTD??. Be quick or be dead was a great single f### heavy and raw. Wicker man!!.The resurrection!!. 20 years ago...wow
 
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