The gamble that paid off

[Lost in a lost world]

Given Maiden’s post millennial success, it’s easy to overlook what a big gamble BNW was.

By the year 2000, Maiden had not only declined in prominence as a contemporary metal band, but were semi-relegated to nostalgia.

Music had changed, with new fads and directions. The Nü Metal and grunge that dominated the 90s were hanging on, and I believe Maiden were largely seen as an 80s metal band.

BNW succeeded in updating the band’s reunion direction without trend chasing yet resurrecting Maiden’s credibility in their ability to create high quality new music.

In hindsight, odds were that a new album from a reunited band that had struggled the ten years prior released during an inflection point in the metal genre, and at a time when Napster’s peer to peer free music download platform had disrupted the music industry, was likely to fail.

And yet, we got the solid album that is BNW and at least 25 more years of Iron Maiden (with recent touring personnel changes noted) .

Whether you like this album, as I do, or not, I think it’s worth reflecting on what an unlikely success it was.

 

[Siddharth]

I believe they invested themselves heavily on The Ed Hunter tour and even releasing a video game of the same name based on the time (though I have no first hand experience how it fared in the market) which pretty much cemented it as the band's return to form on top gear (along with Bruce and Adrian getting back). A reason I just won't call BNW a 'gamble' as such.

 

[Yax]

I believe they invested themselves heavily on The Ed Hunter tour and even releasing a video game of the same name based on the time (though I have no first hand experience how it fared in the market) which pretty much cemented it as the band's return to form on top gear (along with Bruce and Adrian getting back). A reason I just won't call BNW a 'gamble' as such.

Sure, but Best of The Beast, which got the ball rolling, Ed Huntour + the game were retrospective and a celebration of the band's career. BNW was a bit of a gamble in terms of viability of Maiden as a (current) recording artist, after several albums of relative flops, especially since Maiden actually put money down and were hell bent on making a quality product all-around.

 

[Kalata]

I agree that Maiden didn't go back to their classic style for their Reunion album and instead continue to develop their new and preferred approach since the mid-90's - and BNW is one of the top popular and successful (if not the most) Reunion albums in metal. But by the late 90's, heavy metal was already starting to pick up steam again, with the help of bands like HammerFall, Gamma Ray, Stratovarius, Bruce, etc. Also, Maiden were still very successful in 1992 (despite the 90's albums being their weakest for the metal world), so the ''dark ages'' were 1995-1998. The quality of the material played a role, ofc. But yeah, I agree, it wasn't easy to succeed, even after TEH tour.

 

[Cosmiceddie]

...and it is still their best album.

 

[Mosh]

If you look at interviews from this period, it's pretty clear that, at the very least, Bruce Dickinson saw Maiden as a side project. They would make one great album, tour on it, and then move on to other projects for awhile. With this in mind, I don't think it was so much a gamble as an acknowledgement that nothing they would produce would reach people the way their classic albums had, so why not do what comes naturally to them? I do believe that Brave New World ended up being bigger than they anticipated, and they probably underestimated the longevity of Maiden, but this didn't really become clear until 2006-2010 IMO.

Maybe it was a gamble from Steve's perspective, but I tend to think internally Steve would have been happy to play clubs again for the rest of his life and Bruce would have been happy to jump ship again after a couple middling albums.

 

[Lost in a lost world]

If you look at interviews from this period, it's pretty clear that, at the very least, Bruce Dickinson saw Maiden as a side project. They would make one great album, tour on it, and then move on to other projects for awhile. With this in mind, I don't think it was so much a gamble as an acknowledgement that nothing they would produce would reach people the way their classic albums had, so why not do what comes naturally to them? I do believe that Brave New World ended up being bigger than they anticipated, and they probably underestimated the longevity of Maiden, but this didn't really become clear until 2006-2010 IMO.

Maybe it was a gamble from Steve's perspective, but I tend to think internally Steve would have been happy to play clubs again for the rest of his life and Bruce would have been happy to jump ship again after a couple middling albums.

There was maybe a bit of “what to do after firing Blaze” in Steve’s thought process. I understand Rod Smallwood was a main advocate of the reunion.

I think the “gamble” was the new direction. BNW sounded different than most of Maiden’s previous work. Especially Dream of Mirrors, Blood Brothers, Out of the Silent Planet, and The Thin Line Between Love and Hate. Arguably, Wicker Man, The Mercenary, and Ghost of the Navigator were also departures from Maiden’s previous work.

To my ears, the only tracks that sounded close to Maiden's 20th Century style were The Fallen Angel and The Nomad.

Yes, one can listen and can tell it’s an Iron Maiden album but it wasn’t Powerslave redux or anything like that.

Yeah, The X Factor and Virtual XI both departed from Maiden’s earlier sound as well, but BNW was different from those albums, too.

 

[LooseCannon]

They quite aggressively toured BNW for what it was, playing rather a lot of songs off that album, plus The Clansman and Sign of the Cross. They toured six songs off the new album, then two long songs off the Blaze-era albums. And while we consider Sign of the Cross and The Clansman stone cold classics now, they were still controversial then for their association with the previous singer. It really does feel like an interesting set of choices.

 

[srfc]

Sign of the Cross was definitely seen as a major dud by the UK press, so that was a real "we're Iron Maiden, we'll do what we want" moment, as were the rest of the tracks you mentioned.

 

[Lost in a lost world]

Sign of the Cross was definitely seen as a major dud by the UK press, so that was a real "we're Iron Maiden, we'll do what we want" moment, as were the rest of the tracks you mentioned.

They’ll do what they want, they’ll say what they want.

And no one can take that away.

 

[Lost in a lost world]

They quite aggressively toured BNW for what it was, playing rather a lot of songs off that album, plus The Clansman and Sign of the Cross. They toured six songs off the new album, then two long songs off the Blaze-era albums. And while we consider Sign of the Cross and The Clansman stone cold classics now, they were still controversial then for their association with the previous singer. It really does feel like an interesting set of choices.

That’s another good point, I think, in favor of BNW being a new direction gamble.

Although it later didn’t fare as well as hoped on the AMOLAD tour, I really liked the concept of Maiden doing new album tours and classics tours separately.

I understand why they eventually had to compromise and put more classics in new album tours as well, though.