"The Book of Souls" - Official pre-release thread (CONTAINS ALBUM SPOILERS)

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Forostar said:
Not at all. What comes out, is what was written. And what was written was not written with an agenda like: now we can do more songs because we have the right media. A songwriter gives something to a song because it feels good and stops giving when he thinks it doesn't feel right.

Especially not in the old days when there were so many good short songs.
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Of course album length has to do with what could fit on a single disc. LP's originally had 22 min per side, and a CD has 80 minutes of playing time - see any correlation in lenghts of their released albums and the main format? As much as many Maiden-fans like to believe them being some sort of entity of 100% artistic independence and free of commercialism and popular culture conventions, they are most certainly not. EMI or whatever record company they were on at the time would definitely have made sure they released conventional albums according to established rules to make sure they were marketable - and that means A Matter of Life and Death, The Final Frontier, The X Factor and The Book of Souls could never have happened in the 80's.
 
Maturin said:
EMI or whatever record company they were on at the time would definitely have made sure they released conventional albums
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Do you have any evidence for record company interference with Maiden? Granted it has happened to many bands, but I've never heard any such stories with Maiden.
 
Oh, and on the subject of how they 'wrote & recorded everything while fresh in the studio', don't forget that's basically how they did "When the Wild Wind Blows". Learned stuff in sections, recorded them separately and had them put together in post-production. Turned out pretty fine, didn't it?

SinisterMinisterX said:
Do you have any evidence for record company interference with Maiden? Granted it has happened to many bands, but I've never heard any such stories with Maiden.
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No, but I don't believe Steve was so crazy as to suggest a 3 LP album either.
 
Maturin said:
Of course album length has to do with what could fit on a single disc. LP's originally had 22 min per side, and a CD has 80 minutes of playing time - see any correlation in lenghts of their released albums and the main format? As much as many Maiden-fans like to believe them being some sort of entity of 100% artistic independence and free of commercialism and popular culture conventions, they are most certainly not. EMI or whatever record company they were on at the time would definitely have made sure they released conventional albums according to established rules to make sure they were marketable - and that means A Matter of Life and Death, The Final Frontier, The X Factor and The Book of Souls could never have happened in the 80's.
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While this is true, I don't think it was an issue that EMI had to deal with for Iron Maiden back in the 80's. Even though Harris dabbled about with the more progressive side of Maiden's sound through out that time frame, especially in the later 80's, it wasn't really until The X Factor or Brave New World came out that he went full-throttle in that direction.
 
Travis The Dragon said:
:eek: @Wästed The Great I'm VERY surprised you haven't posted here yet!
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Dude. I've had 7 seconds of free time, aside from my driving time. I have only seen the song names for about 1 of thoes 7 seconds this month.

When free, I'll devote time to making a post.

Or not :) I'm sure there are plenty of posts to read so far... like 14 pages.
 
That's cool for sure Wasted. :)

Maturin said:
Of course album length has to do with what could fit on a single disc. LP's originally had 22 min per side, and a CD has 80 minutes of playing time - see any correlation in lenghts of their released albums and the main format? As much as many Maiden-fans like to believe them being some sort of entity of 100% artistic independence and free of commercialism and popular culture conventions, they are most certainly not. EMI or whatever record company they were on at the time would definitely have made sure they released conventional albums according to established rules to make sure they were marketable - and that means A Matter of Life and Death, The Final Frontier, The X Factor and The Book of Souls could never have happened in the 80's.
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SinisterMinisterX said:
Do you have any evidence for record company interference with Maiden? Granted it has happened to many bands, but I've never heard any such stories with Maiden.
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I think it's because Maiden didn't have the creativity in them back then to do that many long songs, but if they had, I'm sure EMI would have allowed it. They were allowed to get pretty creative with Seventh Son.
 
SinisterMinisterX said:
Do you have any evidence for record company interference with Maiden? Granted it has happened to many bands, but I've never heard any such stories with Maiden.
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Nowadays we have a reason to think otherwise; look at the amount of official Maiden material, audio/video/whatever on Youtube. Have you ever heard about a takedown request for Maiden material? I haven't.

Regardless of the stuff on YT or Pirate Bay, new Maiden is by definition going to sell big time and that's why I think record company doesn't care.
 
Maturin said:
No, but I don't believe Steve was so crazy as to suggest a 3 LP album either.
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How about starting a 1995 album with long, gloomy, dark and progressive epic about Spanish inquisition?
Put that year in context of music and whitness the big "fuck you" SOTC was.
 
Double albums were incredibly rare .. especially for non-Live albums when LPs ruled the universe. They were expensive to make (the extra record and the extra packaging)

Also factor in back then bands for the most part released an album every 12-18 months and they were expected to do massive touring to sell the album in between. Now, we get 80+ minute albums every several years instead of 2 40 minute albums every 3 years ... about the same amount of material really . .give or take 10 minutes a year on average
 
Yeeeaaaaahhhhhhh!!!! Awesome day indeed!!! Just checked the boards after a day of "no devices"... And HOLY BOOK of SOOOUULLS!!!! Glorious art work I think. Life is great!!! I'm giddy! 18 minute adventure with Bruce at the wheeeeeeeeel. Title track by Janick and uh, a co- auther :)) haha!! This is amazing stuff. Epics galore and a pair of five minute blasts....
What a beautiful time to be alive. Completely jacked for the coming months!!! Can't stop smiling/ laughing cranking the maiden!! Up the irons to all on this most excellent day!!!! Whoooooo!!!
 
Such good news to know the album will be out this year!

I like the artwork, but would not be surprised if this was teaser artwork prior to the full reveal (the pic on the official Maiden site is called TBOS packshot 995, which to me suggests it is a pic for the press pack, and not necessarily the full work). In the past we have had teaser artwork for FF, DOD etc

I think I know what to expect from the Harris contributions, but the Bruce songs are at this stage really intriguing me! :)
 
Two things on Steve's writing:
I'll take these complaints about repetition more seriously when Caught Somewhere in Time starts losing survivors.
I'll start complaining about his soft/loud song structures when people start complaining about Bruce's and Adrian's.
There is a fuckton of new Maiden coming our way in a little over two months. I hope some of it breaks new ground and I hope some of it feels as warm and familiar as Nicko's old boots.
(Storms off to crank up to No More Lies)
 
Chained Prometheus said:
While this is true, I don't think it was an issue that EMI had to deal with for Iron Maiden back in the 80's. Even though Harris dabbled about with the more progressive side of Maiden's sound through out that time frame, especially in the later 80's, it wasn't really until The X Factor or Brave New World came out that he went full-throttle in that direction.
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Exactly, I guess some people forget what kind of band Maiden was in their earlier times. To think that they were into writing the stuff they do on the last albums is idiotic. Their strength was writing shorter songs (most of the time). They were into it and pulled it off well.
 
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Ohhhhh...teaser artwork?, yes that Could be. You are correct: the tff revealed pic was not the cover art. Maybe we are looking at the "man of sorrows"?
 
I don't think there's any room for the art being anything else than the cover: "The stunning cover art was created by Mark Wilkinson, who has worked with the band previously, and because this 11-track album has a total running time of 92 minutes, it is IRON MAIDEN’s first ever double studio album."
 
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