The Assassin

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How good is The Assassin on a scale of 1-10?

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Diesel 11 said:
It's a really cheesy song for Maiden, and actually, even for No Prayer For The Dying. It's got some cool music going on, but those lyrics are too simplistic for this band. That said, the chorus is pretty fun, and I think overall it's just an average song with some good points, some bad points, but overall nothing terribly special. Shallow fun you can come back to every now and then but won't draw you in that often.
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IMO, the lyrics are horrid, period. And Bruce's performance is underwhelming. Meanwhile, the instrumental backing track is perfect, and should have stayed like that on the album.
 
This song is underrated. I always liked it. The bass & drums playing through it are awesome. Love the start of song. The verses are ''creepy'', great riff and the chorus is fun. Great solos, especially Janick's one. 9/10.
 
I get a very Eastern vibe from this song (similar to “Mother Russia”). The music is better than the lyrics, but it’s not my favorite overall. The verses are weirdly put together, the chorus is so dumb and not in the fun kind of way. Instrumental section is just… there. I dunno. It’s not bad and I don’t dislike it, but there’s nothing here that makes it worth coming back to much. Eh. 5/10
 
MindRuler said:
Call me nuts but I love the song!
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"The Assassin" has the bones of a great song, but that chorus is just so bad. It's like it suddenly shifts into a high school production of West Side Story or something.

MindRuler said:
Also Hooks In You is one of my favourites of NPFTD which I´d even give a 9.
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The lyrics and Bruce's vocal performance are really the weakest parts of that song, sadly.
 
There actually was a brief period of my life where this was my favorite Maiden song :oops:.

I first discovered Iron Maiden back in 1991 and No Prayer For the Dying was my first ever Maiden album. I had never heard anything like it at the time and I was completely infatuated with Maiden's sound and Bruce's vocals in particular. I played No Prayer for months on end, I absolutely loved it.

In time I of course discovered that the No Prayer album isn't exactly a career highlight but I still do enjoy it for mostly sentimental reasons.

For what reason I can no longer be sure of, I absolutely loved this song for the longest time until I sort of grew out of it.

I still dig it but it is super silly and totally camp but not even in a fun way like some of those other less serious 90s songs.

I still do think the music is pretty cool and does convey the subject matter to a point that Maiden I feel does better than pretty much any band (Jer refers to this as theater of the mind and I love that description), but the lyrics feel like they were slapped together to get it recorded as quickly as possible. I can't believe it made the set list back then either but it was a weird time.
 
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I recently went on a No Prayer binge and remembered how good the album actually is, thanks in part to this guy’s breakdown of the entire album and the guitar lines, riffs, and melodies. In particular The Assassin breakdown helped me realize how cool and unique the guitar is in this song. He talks about it around 11:54

 
This one is frustrating. It's a song that gets worse the longer it goes on. The definition of wasted potential.

I genuinely adore the intro with the clean chords. Starts out as a 10/10 but quickly deteriorates. The very next riff changes into Phrygian mode, where the song will remain for large parts of its duration. By itself not a bad thing, but the verses aren't where I thought the song would go. They are still quite good though, despite the bad lyrics.

The chorus is one of the worst parts though. The guitar work is pretty fun actually, but the gang shouts are just goofy and cheesy. What a shame. The post chorus section is at the very least interesting. A serviceable solo follows, before changing tempos for the second solo. Nothing spectacular here, though the second half of each repetition is pretty memorable.

Back to the verses, then the chorus and finally the end. I'm usually not one to call songs filler, but this one really feels undercooked. A 4 is the best I can do.
 
The first 1:30 is genuinely great. It seems like it's building to something really special. Then the chorus arrives like a drunk uncle you never invited to the family dinner and proceeds to hit on your wife, make racist jokes and shits himself before starting a fight with someone.

The song doesn't recover from that. 3/10.
 
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