Senjutsu - 3rd September 2021

Yax said:
Half the forum here thought The Final Frontier was the best yet for like the first few months or the first year after its release. Considering he always does it, I doubt it's a marketing stunt. He probably feels just that in the moment.
Click to expand...

Yeah, and they have stated themselves that there's not much point going to studio or touring with the album if you don't believe in it. It's just logical that one is excited about their most recent output and it's just a healthy sign that they're trying to make the best record possible and are proud of the result. I wouldn't want it any other way.
 
Randalf said:
Yeah, and they have stated themselves that there's not much point going to studio or touring with the album if you don't believe in it. It's just logical that one is excited about their most recent output and it's just a healthy sign that they're trying to make the best record possible and are proud of the result. I wouldn't want it any other way.
Click to expand...

I used to think that - an artist should always strive to make the best piece of art in their career - but I'm not so sure of it anymore. Think about it, if you hold yourself to these standards, it just makes your job harder each time. And in the end we have six year gaps between Maiden albums. It can be just as healthy in the long run for an artist to maintain a creative routine even if they know that what they're working on right now isn't necessarily the best thing they ever did. This way, genuine sparks of inspiration or genius could be processed quicker.
 
Perun said:
You're missing out a few things inbetween. First, SSOASS had three singles. I know The Clairvoyant is a live recording, and it is thus an anomaly in the Maiden catalogue as a live single without a corresponding live album, but it was nevertheless very much part of the SSOASS cycle. It was released only three months after The Evil That Men Do, which itself was released four months after the album. The single artwork also ties in with the SSOASS concept. It has nothing to do with Maiden England or the Infinite Dreams single, which came out a whole year later. Maiden England is also an oddity, first because it only had one single (Infinite Dreams) and second because it wasn't a proper live album when first released, but a video only.
Also I seem to remember that there was supposed to be a Tailgunner single that was scrapped.



Indeed a weird one. There is no proper release date and it wasn't eligible for the charts either.



No More Lies wasn't promoted as a single but as a "souvenir EP" and supposedly only had limited release. It was even released after the end of the tour.

There are also the cases of the Number of the Beast and Trooper singles from 2005 which weren't really tied to any release. I mean, they were clearly tie-ins to the Early Days DVD and tour, but they were released quite a while after the DVD and the Trooper single came out two weeks before the tour ended, so I don't really think it could be regarded as promoting it.



Can you really call it that? It was a record-store day exclusive LP that had no wider release.
Click to expand...

Fair point, for SSOASS I was just being braindead and skipped over it :lol: You could argue that the a-sides weren't strictly the versions on the album, but I wasn't doing that at the time I posted, I just forgot to think about it.

Empire, I agree with you, I'd put it in the same category as Wasting Love/Lord of the Flies/Futureal, it's not a proper old school release that people could easily buy from shops. But given the time it was released, I think it counts more like a real single than anything else post Different World.

EDIT: re: Tailgunner, I wasn't around at the time so I don't know what the actual circumstances were, but I had always presumed that they just decided to go with different songs as the singles, i.e. artwork was done for Tailgunner and Hooks in You and even a video for Tailgunner. But I'd love to know if that was the actual case or not, was Tailgunner supposed to be a third single??
 
Last edited:
Perun said:
I used to think that - an artist should always strive to make the best piece of art in their career - but I'm not so sure of it anymore. Think about it, if you hold yourself to these standards, it just makes your job harder each time. And in the end we have six year gaps between Maiden albums. It can be just as healthy in the long run for an artist to maintain a creative routine even if they know that what they're working on right now isn't necessarily the best thing they ever did. This way, genuine sparks of inspiration or genius could be processed quicker.
Click to expand...

I see! That's a fair observation - I didn't think about that, really!

I may be simplifying the things a bit too much, but when it comes to Maiden, I don't think (or want, anyway) they're attempting to surpass any of their past works per se, just to focus on the task at hand and make a best record possible in the (then) current situation without too much of a comparison with their previous ones. I can see where you're coming from, but I think the gap between Maiden albums is more of a result of their somewhat loosened schedule, rather than artistic ambition. Looking at the way they put songs together and record nowadays, I don't think there's much of attempt at holding any specific standards on conscious efforts at keeping up with the standard set by this or that record; for better or worse, they're "just winging it" on the go.

Granted, as you mentioned, it would be quite healthy to just maintain that routine; that might have lead into some missteps over the years, but sometimes those are the ones that make your next work so much better. Maiden has been releasing one mammoth record in 4-6 years since 2006 and while I don't think the gaps between the albums are specifically an ambition-related issue, they might set some (whether acknowledged and conscious or not) standardizations for the next record... so maybe there's bit of a that behind every record since AMOLAD getting bigger and bigger, whether that's a good thing or not. Senjutsu is obviously a little bit shorter than TBOS in terms on runtime, but looking at it's "structure" it might very well be their most "sonically massive" record since Dance of Death.

Anyway, you made a very good point!
 
Randalf said:
I see! That's a fair observation - I didn't think about that, really!

I may be simplifying the things a bit too much, but when it comes to Maiden, I don't think (or want, anyway) they're attempting to surpass any of their past works per se, just to focus on the task at hand and make a best record possible in the (then) current situation without too much of a comparison with their previous ones. I can see where you're coming from, but I think the gap between Maiden albums is more of a result of their somewhat loosened schedule, rather than artistic ambition. Looking at the way they put songs together and record nowadays, I don't think there's much of attempt at holding any specific standards on conscious efforts at keeping up with the standard set by this or that record; for better or worse, they're "just winging it" on the go.

Granted, as you mentioned, it would be quite healthy to just maintain that routine; that might have lead into some missteps over the years, but sometimes those are the ones that make your next work so much better. Maiden has been releasing one mammoth record in 4-6 years since 2006 and while I don't think the gaps between the albums are specifically an ambition-related issue, they might set some (whether acknowledged and conscious or not) standardizations for the next record... so maybe there's bit of a that behind every record since AMOLAD getting bigger and bigger, whether that's a good thing or not. Senjutsu is obviously a little bit shorter than TBOS in terms on runtime, but looking at it's "structure" it might very well be their most "sonically massive" record since Dance of Death.

Anyway, you made a very good point!
Click to expand...

I can't tell you for certain if the long gaps between Maiden albums are ambition-related, there's a lot more that factors in, but it might be part of it. But that was just meant as a throwaway example anyway, it was more about the general argument you made.
 
Perun said:
Indeed a weird one. There is no proper release date and it wasn't eligible for the charts either.
Click to expand...
According to Wikipedia, the release date of the ''Futureal'' single is July 28th, 1998.
srfc said:
EDIT: re: Tailgunner, I wasn't around at the time so I don't know what the actual circumstances were, but I had always presumed that they just decided to go with different songs as the singles, i.e. artwork was done for Tailgunner and Hooks in You and even a video for Tailgunner. But I'd love to know if that was the actual case or not, was Tailgunner supposed to be a third single??
Click to expand...
''Hooks In You'' was originally planned to be a single - probably the backdrop for the song for NPOTR tour would have been the single cover. ''Tailgunner'' is a bit strange, yeah - artwork for it, video...
 
Yeah, I'm agreed on the cover for XF (and LOTF, for that matter). It's just awful. I'm hesitant to blame the artist for it as he has done some nice stuff (most recently the new DT cover) but this is the one that I just replace the cover art for on all platforms.
 
DJMayes said:
Yeah, I'm agreed on the cover for XF (and LOTF, for that matter). It's just awful. I'm hesitant to blame the artist for it as he has done some nice stuff (most recently the new DT cover) but this is the one that I just replace the cover art for on all platforms.
Click to expand...

I can understand that they wanted to do something different. However history showed that it was a failure thus never have we seen such a cover again. I also got their need to do something different in TXF music wise. However IMO that was a completely failed attempt and in all levels. I can understand that lots of people like it. Fine by me, I just see that I never ever managed to listen to more than half a song off this album after repeated attempts.
 
Last edited:
Gk1 said:
I can understand that they wanted to do something different. However history showed that it was a failure thus never have seen such a cover again. I also got their need to do something different in TXF music wise. However IMO that was a completely failed attempt and in all levels. I can however understand that lots of people like it. Fine by me, I just see that I never ever managed to listen to more than half a song off this album after repeated attempts.
Click to expand...
How do you feel about more recent live versions? I've also got a very low opinion of the particular album but, for example, Sign of the Cross was a highlight of the LOTB tour for me.
 
DJMayes said:
How do you feel about more recent live versions? I've also got a very low opinion of the particular album but, for example, Sign of the Cross was a highlight of the LOTB tour for me.
Click to expand...
To begin with I never thought that the problem was with Blaze. The live versions for Man on the edge, SOTC and LOTF were of course better with higher levels of energy. But I think that SOTC is just ok live. And the songs are weak to begin with. I'd rather hear Justice of the peace and Judgement day live. Quite good songs in my opinion. If they were included in the album itself they would make the rest of the songs look even weaker. At least the lyrics in TXF are quite strong and emotional but that's about it for me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top