New Single - The Writing on the Wall

Trying not to let the new music hype train influence me too much I have to say after many more listens I have to put this right up there with Wicker Man as far as Reunion-era singles go. I think I like it even more. Such a solid tune. Love the acoustic into (that's sort of a Maiden trope along with the gallop now, don't you think?) Bruce sounds great. Awesome solos. The video is awesome. Really, really can't wait for the album.
 
Yax said:
Bach sounds really good here to me though. It's a comfortable song for him and he's spot on pitch wise - He has always been a bit spotty live in that regard, even in Skid Row.
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I thought Halford sounded rough as well in the second clip with Bach lol. But they are both without doubt great singers.
 
terrell39 said:
Speaking of Shirley...earlier in the thread (might have been @Dr. Eddies Wingman ) was mentioned with earbuds you can more easily hear the channel separation of the 3 guitarists. I agree in regards to the rhythm but about the lead...

On Book of Souls Shirley put Dave's lead in left channel (same as live lps). But if this 1st solo is Dave (I now agree it is) it is in the center channel with H's lead also (instead of the left channel where it belongs). This was partially why I was thinking H played the 1st one.

Shirley never has been consistent about which channel he puts the guys in.
On AMOLAD, sometimes Janick's rhythm is in right channel; other times (same lp) in the center!
On BOS, all Janick lead in center channel but in Live BOS lp, Janick is in right channel.

Make up your mind Shirley!
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Somebody asked him about panning during one of the press cycles for the various Maiden live albums he's produced (for some reason I wanna say it was his blog, specifically, and En Vivo, but don't quote me on that) and far as I can remember, his answer for the panning was basically just that he pans the guitars however he feels like. Janick and Adrian basically end up going splitsies on the center spot in En Vivo. On the album version of Rock in Rio there's crazy amounts of movement on the guitars because the solos and other leads are almost always panned to center, while the DVD just has Adrian there, on the center channel, and literally nothing else since the vocals, drums and bass are panned to center on the stereo channels instead.

It's utterly bizarre and I'll forever hold it as one of the many examples for why Shirley is not a particularly good producer, even outside of Steve's meddling. Steve doesn't force him to not EQ the drums or care about mic placement, after all.
 
Ruflux said:
Somebody asked him about panning during one of the press cycles for the various Maiden live albums he's produced (for some reason I wanna say it was his blog, specifically, and En Vivo, but don't quote me on that) and far as I can remember, his answer for the panning was basically just that he pans the guitars however he feels like. Janick and Adrian basically end up going splitsies on the center spot in En Vivo. On the album version of Rock in Rio there's crazy amounts of movement on the guitars because the solos and other leads are almost always panned to center, while the DVD just has Adrian there, on the center channel, and literally nothing else since the vocals, drums and bass are panned to center on the stereo channels instead.

It's utterly bizarre and I'll forever hold it as one of the many examples for why Shirley is not a particularly good producer, even outside of Steve's meddling. Steve doesn't force him to not EQ the drums or care about mic placement, after all.
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I think he did an excellent job on Flight 666. Great mix.
 
terrell39 said:
Speaking of Shirley...earlier in the thread (might have been @Dr. Eddies Wingman ) was mentioned with earbuds you can more easily hear the channel separation of the 3 guitarists. I agree in regards to the rhythm but about the lead...

On Book of Souls Shirley put Dave's lead in left channel (same as live lps). But if this 1st solo is Dave (I now agree it is) it is in the center channel with H's lead also (instead of the left channel where it belongs). This was partially why I was thinking H played the 1st one.

Shirley never has been consistent about which channel he puts the guys in.
On AMOLAD, sometimes Janick's rhythm is in right channel; other times (same lp) in the center!
On BOS, all Janick lead in center channel but in Live BOS lp, Janick is in right channel.

Make up your mind Shirley!
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That's not really how mixing works. It's not as simple as "Dave left, Adrian center, Janick right" job done.

If the guys are playing different things then you potentially need to change up the panning in order to make things balanced. If two guys are playing straight power chords and another is playing something different then typically you'd want the power chords hard left and right, providing a big wide bed, and the different thing (octaves, fancier chords, whatever) in the center. This keeps things wide, separated, and also balanced across the stereo field.

But depending on what a guitar is playing it might clash with the vocal if they're around the same register. So it could be better panned to the side so that the vocal can be heard clearer.

There's no absolute hard and fast rules to this thing, and it's entirely situation dependent from song to song, and even within different parts of a song.

Also, BOS Live Chapter wasn't mixed by Shirley as far as I know. Pretty sure that was Tony Newton.
 
Trevoire said:
That's not really how mixing works. It's not as simple as "Dave left, Adrian center, Janick right" job done.
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Exactly. There is a podcast with Ken "Pooch" Van Druten about mixing 3 guitars live... There is A LOT more to that. He specifically talks about how he approached Maiden...
 
Kevin Shirley has done an excellent job on the live albums, so it's a bit odd why the studio albums sound so lifeless compared with them. In particular the songs on The Final Frontier which also appear on En Vivo. The live versions sound so much better.
 
Josh said:
This album is going to fucking rule. I can feel it. I see TWOTW being the second track acting as the setup for the rest of the album.
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Been thinking about the likely track placement throughout the day and it just feels like a Track #2. I imagine there'll be another long mid-tempo song with an ambient intro of sorts opening the album, so I think they'll have to hit the ground running with a quick one in Track #3.
 
Track #2 or #3 makes sense to set up the rest of the album. It could also work at the end of the album to wrap things up…such epic, apocalyptic lyrical content and emotive music inspiring hope for the future (particularly the solo section).

I’d be very happy for this song to be the title track…to me it feels more than a lead off single. If it is “just” the lead off single then my god the actual title track (if there is a title track) must be killer!

This song is incredibly solid. It’s even more enjoyable on day two of listening. I love it.
 
At the moment my ears are loving the guitar melody in the left channel during “Can you see them ridiiiiinng? Can you see them ridiiiinng?”. Especially during the second time the chorus is played. It’s low(ish) in the mix, but clearly audible and it’s bloody amazing to my ears.
 
johnglen said:
The problem isn’t really that they don’t release a «Powerslave 2», though people here would loose their minds by joy if they had managed to do something like that, the problem is that the new song is awful. Using the age excuse is insulting for the band actually, I won’t mention any other big bands but just go and listen to the song «the walls» by the, not so young, Flotsam&Jetsam to see how Maiden style music is done properly without sounding old or cliche.

A day and many listens later I still cant understand what this song wants to achieve and for whom it is exactly. It wants to be commercial , obviously, but for the rock/western/blues/whatever elements to work for a mainstream crowd the song must be fast and snappy. This is a slow, monolithic song with no changes in tempo and that makes its commercial melodies even more absurd. Now I actually like monolithic music , I am even into funeral doom, but for something like this to work the song must be heavy and have dark melodies not happy western/country stuff.
The song isn’t for metalheads, better avoid any metal Facebook group , the song isn’t really for mainstream audiences since they won’t get the plodding nature of it , the song is just a mash of weird ideas that would be better in a Smith solo album.

Oh and what is this theory about how this is like solo Dickinson, Definitely sounds nothing like what would belong in Accident of birth, chemical wedding or even tyranny of souls.
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It's my opinion that real Maiden fans are open to the experimentation and different musical avenues that Maiden has gone through over the years. They have never stagnated yet they also have never sold out. Are all of their songs, especially post-reunion, magical headbangers? No. Are some too long and not "good" or even "great"? No. But at least their albums don't sound the same.
 
adrian fn rules said:
It's my opinion that real Maiden fans are open to the experimentation and different musical avenues that Maiden has gone through over the years. They have never stagnated yet they also have never sold out. Are all of their songs, especially post-reunion, magical headbangers? No. Are some too long and not "good" or even "great"? No. But at least their albums don't sound the same.
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exactly. it gets tiring hearing (only here strangely enough) how "out of touch" Maiden is when - let's get real here - they are one of the VERY few metal bands still writing material that is relevant today as it was 30 years ago. name another ! don't give me Metallica even though they are obviously a huge band for me. outside of a few good songs on Hardwired they haven't written ANYTHING noteworthy since 1997. Slayer? nothing since maybe '98 or '00 (they've been re-hashing the same death metal for two decades now...and they're done anyway. Megadeth? Some good albums recently and hopefully another one soon...so they are on the short list. Ozzy? Nope! AC/DC - kinda but not really. Queensryche(s) ? Ha! Priest? Not in a while. Maiden? Um, yeah. Very relevant. Look, nobody as "comfortable" as these guys are gonna write another Powerslave or even BNW again. Just facts. But they are still writing interesting (BOS / TFF) to fantastic (AMOLAD) albums in the sunset years. They don't need to apologize or defend themselves to anyone !
 
Having had another day and multiple listens to absorb the song, I wanted to point out a few things I've observed. And yea, this song is still fucking awesome as far as I'm concerned.

1. Bruce's vocals sound quite similar (can't you seem the ridiiiiin) to his work on Tattooed Millionaire. But I can also hear that his higher notes sound a lot cleaner, which is what I was expecting especially as good as he sounded on the first leg of the LotB tour.
2. Anyone who says it "doesn't sound like Maiden" is a crazy person. It sounds like nothing but Maiden, though the western-ish motif is a bit new. But Maiden has made a career of writing songs that take their basic sound and stretch it into something new. Satellite 15 doesn't sound like Maiden. Neither does Fear is the Key. Or Strange World. Etc. Yet they ALL sound like Maiden, just stretching a bit into more territory than strictly metal.
3. I like how, as the band gets older, they allow themselves more leeway into sounding like their own influences. Thin Lizzy, UFO, Golden Earring, etc, these bands are much more apparent in Maiden's sound than when Maiden was starting out, and that's only a good thing.
4. I see lots of weird confusion about Adrian writing the lyrics. This is not the first time Adrian has written lyrics. Pretty sure Wasted Years, Sea of Madness, and Stranger in a Strange Land were all penned by Adrian. (If I'm wrong about him writing these lyrics, I'll stand corrected.)
5. And now for the best mind fuck of all: A longer amount of time has passed between this song, and the reunion album Brave New World, than from the band's first album to Brave New World. That means the "reunion" lineup has lasted longer now than all prior lineups (starting with the debut album) combined. That blows me away. I was 20 when BNW came out. I'm almost....27 now. Getting older.
6. One more thing...I also see comments here, Youtube, Facebook, etc, that Maiden are writing songs like this because they are older. This is a silly notion. Maiden write songs like this because they want to. They've written slower and more steady songs ever since their inception, and they're as likely to play another song just as fast as they ever did. This isn't a case of old people not being able to play as fast. It's a case of people just doing what they want, fast, slow, medium, whatever. Book of Souls should've proven that they can still tear shit up when they want to, as that album has a lot more power and speed than it's two predecessors.

I think I'm done.
 
chaosapiant said:
6. One more thing...I also see comments here, Youtube, Facebook, etc, that Maiden are writing songs like this because they are older. This is a silly notion. Maiden write songs like this because they want to. They've written slower and more steady songs ever since their inception, and they're as likely to play another song just as fast as they ever did. This isn't a case of old people not being able to play as fast. It's a case of people just doing what they want, fast, slow, medium, whatever. Book of Souls should've proven that they can still tear shit up when they want to, as that album has a lot more power and speed than it's two predecessors.

I think I'm done.
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Agreed. Maiden can still easily make a Powerslave 2 if they wanted. The thing is they've been there, done that.
 
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