The Book of Souls: General album discussion

Don't know mate. I think Only the good die young is an epic close to an epic album...so can't help you there :)
 
But.... you can't reorder them, Seventh Son is a complete story :eek:
And he's only been born in SSOASS, you can't put that at the end
 
viced92 said:
I don't hate this album, if I were to rate the first 5 songs as a group it'd be perfect. My problem is with the last 3 songs. If they had reordered the track listing I'm sure I wouldn't have this problem. But after the climax of the title track, the final 3 songs just feel like a letdown. .whenever I listen to this album, I find myself thinking it should be over after the title track.

It basically feels like a perfect 5 song EP with three bonus tracks that are just good to me. Again, if they didn't put those 3 songs consecutively to end the album I wouldn't have this problem I'm sure. However, I find that trio of songs to be my most least memorable such set in Maiden's history.
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Lol. Those 3 tracks are my favorite, and most underplayed. OTGDY is one of my favorite Maiden songs.
 
jazz from hell said:
BUT I must say something about EOTC:
I've been a Fan for a long time and also followed Bruce during his solo-years, saw him on Balls-, Skunkworks- and Chemical-Tours, I love great classical or jazz piano players like Gould, Jarrett etc. So I have nothing against pianos and I'm all for Bruce doing something different, progressive, Singer/Songwriter, whatever, if it's good, even more so because I think Maiden are sometimes a bit limiting for him and his voice (for example I like his calmer, lower voice very much). So after I read about EOTC and read all the enthusiastic comments on this board I was really curious to hear the song. And I must say, I'm SO disappointed. I don't care weather Bruce obviously doesn't have any piano-technique, that's okay with me, doesn't matter at all - if he had any taste! Those corny, novelettish 5-finger melodies... And they just won't stop! So bad it even makes me laugh... Complete, utter rubbish! Embarassing really.
I respect this guy enormously for his singing and his songwriting on songs like revelations or the complete chemical wedding. I don't want to offend anyone who apperentlyseems to enjoy this piece, but I feel totally let down by this song and also the band, especially in Bruce for releasing it.
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That's exactly what I think too... Exactly that. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one.
 
jazz from hell said:
Those corny, novelettish 5-finger melodies... And they just won't stop! So bad it even makes me laugh... Complete, utter rubbish! Embarassing really.
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Can you define what you're talking about here? I honestly don't hear any difference between the melodies in EOTC and the rest of Maiden's songs, except that they are played on a piano.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
Can you define what you're talking about here?
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I think it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to "define" (but I don't know, maybe @jazz from hell will try to). I find some melodies such as 6:18, 8:35 (too basic riff in this context), The Legacy repetition that shouldn't happen and 12:55 just too corny. All that put together makes a pretty tasteless mixture. "Tasteless" is a very strong word and it makes me truly uncomfortable to use it in reference to Bruce's work, but that's my honest opinion. I don't know what happened. But still it's like 1% in the sea of wonderful stuff that he delivered and I'm sure will deliver in future.

It's probably all a matter of taste, so if people who praise EotC like such things as Nightwish or Sabaton, I have no further comments.

I repeat: the first melody of Empire is beautiful and I can't get over the fact that it could be an axis of a much shorter and consistent piece.
 
Srogyy said:
I think it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to "define" (but I don't know, maybe @jazz from hell will try to). I find some melodies such as 6:18, 8:35 (too basic riff in this context), The Legacy repetition that shouldn't happen and 12:55 just too corny. All that put together makes a pretty tasteless mixture. "Tasteless" is a very strong word and it makes me truly uncomfortable to use it in reference to Bruce's work, but that's my honest opinion. I don't know what happened. But still it's like 1% in the sea of wonderful stuff that he delivered and I'm sure will deliver in future.

It's probably all a matter of taste, so if people who praise EotC like such things as Nightwish or Sabaton, I have no further comments.
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We can't sit around and pretend that Iron Maiden are always creators of brilliant, intricate, unexpected melodies. Most of Iron Maiden's melodies (including their most popular songs) are incredibly simplistic and "basic" as you said. Sure, they are top class musicians and they add a lot of texture, speed, and personal touch into everything they do, but we're talking about a band that plays E-D-C in virtually every song they've ever written.

However, I also love Nightwish and Sabaton. And generally, I would argue that both of those bands use a wider variance of melodies than Maiden, especially Nightwish. I'm not knocking Maiden, they are masters of their sound, but let's not pretend that EOTC contains melodies that are more basic than some of Maiden's classic material.
 
Srogyy said:
No, but they have always been extraordinarily tasteful (word of the day) with their melodies. That's what makes them so great. The two bands I mentioned and thousands of fucking power metal bands don't have that very important factor.
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Exactly. They always manage to hit that sweet spot and know just how to put that special, magical touch on their music and they don't have to be super original to do it. I could name a lot of other bands out there who are the same.
 
I sense that in a moment we'll turn this discussion into "that's your opinion" territory again. Of course it's my opinion! And of course you have yours. But that's the point of each forum about music. Technically we are all silly to be discussing what's better and what's worse, what's tasteful and what's tasteless... Yet we do it all the time, so the only thing to do is to play along.
 
The Nomad said:
I listened to the first disc and it sounded to me like this was more of a progression from the Dance of Death style album. It feels more 'hard rock' than 'heavy metal'...which is errr not something I like. I never listen to the DoD album save for the title track and Paschendale because of it. I really don't like that particular style.

This is too bad for me because I felt what they captured on AMOLAD would be continued. The darker, broodier heavy songs interlaced with deeply emotional melodies. Of course TFF didn't please me in that regard either.
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On a couple of listens my first impressions were it was a DoD clone. Impressions so far IESF and EOTC are book ends of Dance of Death 2.

Looks like AMOLAD is the best reunion album for me.

I've always said this about Maiden though which is why I like them so much their music has never been easy to listen to, they are not a band out to play a catchy tune. There is a process of having to learn the tune until you have done that it is really too early to have a solid opinon on the album.
 
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Well hot damn! I would say this album overall is very liked by all of us here but wow... everyone seems to be divided on the songs. What some people think are the best, the other half thinks are the worst. Didn't expect that from Maiden Fans... Slayer fans maybe... ;)

I'm just kidding. I know everybody's opinion will be different.
 
jazz from hell said:
My first impressions from the other thread still hold true, I'll quote them here, so they don't get lost:

For the most part I think this is a great album. So far I'm enjoying it very much. My favorites are IESF, TBOS and some solo parts in TRATB. Great playing by everyone. Also really good sound IMO.

BUT I must say something about EOTC:
I've been a Fan for a long time and also followed Bruce during his solo-years, saw him on Balls-, Skunkworks- and Chemical-Tours, I love great classical or jazz piano players like Gould, Jarrett etc. So I have nothing against pianos and I'm all for Bruce doing something different, progressive, Singer/Songwriter, whatever, if it's good, even more so because I think Maiden are sometimes a bit limiting for him and his voice (for example I like his calmer, lower voice very much). So after I read about EOTC and read all the enthusiastic comments on this board I was really curious to hear the song. And I must say, I'm SO disappointed. I don't care weather Bruce obviously doesn't have any piano-technique, that's okay with me, doesn't matter at all - if he had any taste! Those corny, novelettish 5-finger melodies... And they just won't stop! So bad it even makes me laugh... Complete, utter rubbish! Embarassing really.
I respect this guy enormously for his singing and his songwriting on songs like revelations or the complete chemical wedding. I don't want to offend anyone who apperentlyseems to enjoy this piece, but I feel totally let down by this song and also the band, especially in Bruce for releasing it.

However, to end this on a positive note, as I said, there's some great stuff on this album, which, appart from the last song, may even be one of their best. My favorite part at the moment is the climax of the title-track with all those great guitars and bruce entering... it's just too short really...
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I kinda see your point but honestly were you expecting much more from the piano department after hearing about Bruce's limited playing ability? And like Knick said, it's not like this band has ever created anything particularly complex. They're simple melodies but what counts is what they do with the rhythm and (especially in the case of EOTC) how they propel whatever story they're telling. For all its simplicity, I think Bruce's melodies do a good job at illustrating what he's singing about. As someone who hardly pays attention to lyrics, I can really appreciate that. I'm able to follow the story very easily.
 
He initially intended the melodies to be intros to guitar based songs. As a matter of fact one of them was the basis of Death or Glory but they finally did not use it. I understand that some might have expected sometning different but we all know what they can do, right?
Bruce has no classical training and let's face it he knows the Maiden bountaries. This is why he has a solo career you know!
The main issue for me is the structure. It is not following any classical patterns and not any Maiden patterns either. There are quite a few parts that are quite good but the form is so stretched out and loose that one can barely call it a song. So all in all Bruce is actually making music along with the lyrics and once he said the complete story with words he stopped coming out with music parts. So if he thought he needed to include more lyric detail we would have ended up with an even more melodies or reuse the same ones over and over again. Imagine that they actually had to shorten the song for 3 minutes. Mmy impression is that it is an example of the music following the lyrics and not a solid song that had lyrics added later.
 
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