The Book of Souls: General album discussion

mckindog said:
I think the band made a conscious effort to step away from reliable structures. Solos pop up in weird places and styles. Song patterns are arranged in different ways. Repetition is minimized.

I sense some paralysis by analysis here:
EVERY SONG ON THIS ALBUM IS SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT FROM EVERY OTHER SONG ON THIS ALBUM.
How many band can do this on a 45-minute record, let alone for 92 minutes?
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Good point, to which I agree. There are no two songs on the album that sound like "twins".
 
mckindog said:
I have a different take on the "recycled material" observations:
There may parts of certain songs that recall old Maiden material, but there is very little here where an entire composition mirrors another song.

You can't say there is anything at all in the catalogue that mirrors Eternity, Unknown, TR&TB, River, Souls, Clown, Sorrows or Empire in terms of a combination of melodies, rhythms, arrangement and structure.
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Of course not. Such a combination of so many factors can never be twinned! But it is possible to recognize something as recycled when it's a smaller combination, or a smaller portion of the song. I am not sure about your TRATB observation. I do not per se think that it is a 100 percent twin of another song, but there are factors that can be criticized. But I'll wait with a bigger analysis until some other time. I want to absorb it more.
mckindog said:
I sense some paralysis by analysis here:
EVERY SONG ON THIS ALBUM IS SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT FROM EVERY OTHER SONG ON THIS ALBUM.
How many band can do this on a 45-minute record, let alone for 92 minutes?
Click to expand...
A good job, and it indeed contributes to making the album so good. But Didn't Maiden realize this on most albums?

Just playing the devil's advocate here, you're having a point, but I wonder which other albums do have songs which are not significantly different from each other (and let's name the examples). Most people would say The X-Factor, because of its many inros and slow build-ups. Still, it could be said that most of these songs have their own identity.
 
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Startripper said:
I've been scouring reviews for days and keeping up with the comments here to see if anything speaks to what I've been feeling about this album, and actually have found most of them to be unconditionally positive (mainly looking at the main press, and Amazon.com and Amazon.de). Metal-Archives seemed to have a fair mix of reviews though, and then this less-than-effusive one was just posted on one of my favorite metal blogs: http://www.angrymetalguy.com/iron-maiden-the-book-of-souls-review/

Angry Metal Guy has been doing a very well-thought out retrospective of Maiden's career and ranked their albums from "worst to be(a)st." It's a fun read if you haven't checked it out yet. He has some interesting and very strong opinions (sometimes controversial!) and I think he expresses a lot better than I can some of my impressions of the new album. I've waited until now to post anything because I wanted to have time to let everything sink in.

I had pumped myself up all Friday afternoon and waited until late in the evening to dive into the music for the first time with headphones. After all that buildup and excitement though, I have to admit the first few songs came as a letdown. It was a struggle to get through disc 1, but I did enjoy much of disc 2 on first listen. Since that evening I've listened to the album everywhere. A few times on headphones, several times blaring through the stereo, and on repeat during a car trip. I still can't say I love the album, but I like it and hope it will continue to grow on me. I'm one of the fans who quietly worships TFF and has developed an intense appreciation for AMOLAD even though neither of them surpasses ones like NOTB, POM, and SSOASS in my book. I put the modern albums and classic albums on separate pedestals and I listen to them at different times depending on my mood. Usually modern Maiden takes multiple listens to reveal new riches. I just don't know how often I will be coming back to TBOS.

I was going to give a song-by-song review but a lot of you have already done such a good job with this, I'd just be repeating all the same strengths and weaknesses, so I'm going to skip that for now. The songs that stood out to me were the beautiful Man of Sorrows, EOTC, and TOAC. IESF and TBOS have grown on me since then. Like a few of you here, I'm still not sure where TRATB stands. I like parts of it, but not the song as a whole. This album has been frustrating because the melodies on it didn't hook me right away (especially true for disc 1). Neither did the guitar solos. There were just a couple sections that made me sit up and get carried away by the music (intro to EOTC, for example, and that spacey section in TMOS). It's as if Maiden wrote some of their most straightforward music and then tried to make it more complex as an afterthought. (And I like complexity!).

There are a lot of different Maiden elements on display here: the folksy, the storytelling, the pensive and existential, the theatrical and epic, and the dashing and somewhat comical. Maiden usually use all these different elements very well. For me, it's just not coming together this time and the album lacks cohesion. Stricter editing and more rehearsals might have helped.
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You've summed up my feelings on the album pretty much perfectly. Thanks a lot! :)
 
Glad to read the following bit:

"I can honestly say that we never, ever considered that this would be the last, that this will be the last world tour and then we will hang it up. We always keep our options open. We know we still love to make albums. I’d like to do the best tour and then do another record."

That's 2/6 who have gone on record saying they'd like to do another, and no indication of any of the other four not wanting to.
 
Forostar said:
Of course not. Such a combination of so many factors can never be twinned! But it is possible to recognize something as recycled when it's a smaller combination, or a smaller portion of the song. I am not sure about your TRATB observation. I do not per se think that it is a 100 percent twin of another song, but there are factors that can be criticized. But I'll wait with a bigger analysis until some other time. I want to absorb it more.

A good job, and it indeed contributes to making the album so good. But Didn't Maiden realize this on most albums?

Just playing the devil's advocate here, you're having a point, but I wonder which other albums do have songs which are not significantly different from each other (and let's name the examples). Most people would say The X-Factor, because of its many inros and slow build-ups. Still, it could be said that most of these songs have their own identity.
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To first bold: you might find melodic or rhythmic parts that evoke another song, but the whole is unique in the Maiden catalog - no other song has ever followed that pattern structure.

To the second: few if any. That's what makes Maiden a great artist, and these criticisms of repeating themselves weak.
 
DJMayes said:
Glad to read the following bit:

"I can honestly say that we never, ever considered that this would be the last, that this will be the last world tour and then we will hang it up. We always keep our options open. We know we still love to make albums. I’d like to do the best tour and then do another record."

That's 2/6 who have gone on record saying they'd like to do another, and no indication of any of the other four not wanting to.
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It's so good to read this... I know it will happen sometime, but I get sad every time they ask about the end of the band. People should just enjoy the moment and this amazing album! :)
 
So If Eternity Should Fail is supposed to be part of a concept album. I really hope this gets made eventually.
 
Forostar said:
Just playing the devil's advocate here, you're having a point, but I wonder which other albums do have songs which are not significantly different from each other (and let's name the examples). Most people would say The X-Factor, because of its many inros and slow build-ups. Still, it could be said that most of these songs have their own identity.
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Gave this a little more thought. Closest they came:
Sanctuary/Charlotte/Iron Maiden
Enema/Fates/Silent, Smoke/Hooks/Slaughter
Fortunes of War/Look For the Truth/Aftermath
Hardly damning.
 
Good album, but not perfect. I listened to Seventh Son after this, and that one is clearly still their best. Probably always will be. If a five year recording break couldn't produce an album equal to Seventh Son, I don't know what it takes? But I do enjoy Book Of Souls, and I appreciate the effort. It has some really good songs. If Eternity Should Fail, The Red And The Black, The Book Of Souls, Tears Of A Clown and Empire Of The Clouds are faultless, in my book. Future classics, without doubt. The other songs are flawed in one way or another, but mostly OK. I think 8/10 is a fair score. I wanted it badly to be 10/10, but it clearly isn't. Probably their best reunion era album alongside The Final Frontier, though. I do look forward to hearing some of it live, but God forbid they play all of it.
 
Wow PC! That's pretty amazing to hear you like a reunion album that much! And see? It's not because of hype that we end up liking an album so much like you thought with AMOLAD because TBOS was VERY hyped with nothing but great and positive reviews. We truly like what we like.

And they definitely won't be playing all of it since Bruce has said
EOTC won't be played. Which sucks so much!
 
Was originally going to post this in unpopular opinions thread but figured it'd be better here:

This might be unpopular given some of the comments I've seen on the album: Depending on the definition you use, I don't think TBOS is any more progressive than the two albums that came before it. If anything the songs are much more straightforward than before. Musically I think it's closer to BNW than TFF. What makes TBOS dense to me is that every song has a different flavor and style to it. The second half of TFF kind of had this, but it was only 5 songs and they were long enough for you to get immersed in compared to TBOS' 11 different sounding songs at more varying lengths. And of course AMOLAD felt very much like a single unit.

But when you take each song by itself, I think most of them are fairly straightforward. Even the epics. Take The Red and the Black for example. Really good song, but it sticks to one tempo and one mood for the entire thing. No odd rhythms or time signatures, no changes in dynamics, just an extended instrumental jam really. Compare that to When the Wild Wind Blows, Steve's last epic. While it's also not the most dynamic song on the album, it does shift moods quite a bit and I feel like it takes several different twists and turns throughout. The tempo changes a couple times and there are more softer bits. That to me is what makes Maiden progressive.

Of course, progressive doesn't equal good so it's not a criticism of the album. Just something interesting to me that it feels this way despite being their longest album with some of their longest songs. Also, I do think it's still a step forward musically for the band. I think it's natural for any band that gets increasingly proggier to have a need at some point to dial it back a bit in order to move forward. Rush and Metallica are prime examples of this. Maiden managed to do this without abandoning the long songs and not dumbing down their music, which is really impressive to me.
 
Oh, I should explain the I have different, secondary definitions of progressive music.

Such as:
1. Songs not following a verse-chorus-verse-chorus pattern.
2. A song changing in the middle similar to what the title track does.
3. A song having multiple, different vocal parts such as TRATB, TMOS, and EOTC.
4. Guitar solos and vocal parts being put in at different, unexpected times.

So no, it's not progressive by the true, main definitions and Maiden has never been that progressive as far as that is concerned, but what I am hearing is more of the other things I mentioned than in any other Maiden album so it is definitely the most complex and creative album they've ever done in my opinion. EOTC really helps to push it to that level.
 
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