When Maiden and orchestras collide

First of all, thank you Black Bart for sharing this video! I watched most of it, probably around 80%, but skipped around through certain parts.

Let's start with the positives. The cover band is clearly talented and manages to deliver great performances for the most part. There were some moments with wonky timing, but it's live after all; shit happens. The vocalist did some great Bruce impressions, some of his screams were seriously impressive, though Hallowed was pretty rough for some reason. The sound was pretty good as well, though I wasn't the biggest fan of how the bass in particular sounded. That said this video sounds much better than Nights Of The Dead, so that's at least something :D
The walking Eddie during Iron Maiden was a neat touch and I wondered what they'd do there, since so much of the show was faithful to Legacy Of The Beast.
Also, the setlist was great. The obvious classics were there, of course, but there was also a healthy dose of deep-ish cuts in the form of Dance Of Death, Wasting Love and Infinite Dreams.

Now let's talk about the orchestra and my issues with these kinds of projects. The arrangements were too faithful to the originals. You could remove the orchestra entirely and 99% of the concert would sound the way the Maiden versions sound like. All guitar parts, bass parts, drum beats; everything is there as it is on the albums. They barely touched the metal instruments. The orchestra on the other hand has parts that are extremely simple. They either play along with the guitars (or in cases like the distorted verses in DOD with the synth like on the album) or they mostly play legato chords. There are of course parts where that works, while in other sections like the verses for Iron Maiden or Run To The Hills where the choices are rather questionable and don't quite work. Particularly in the latter it changes the tonality of the verse from ambiguously Mixolydian to a weird Dorian; really disliked that decision.

My biggest issue - and that's not unique to this project, you can see it in most of the albums of rock and metal bands that added an orchestra to their old stuff - is just how unimaginative the inclusion of the orchestra is. Hell, listen to any classical piece. Take your pick, go with a string quartett, or a movement for a symphony orchestra, or a concerto; you'll notice immediately just how versatile the orchestra is. You have up to dozens of musicians at your disposal and each instrument has multiple playing techniques at their disposal yet most of that gets ignored. Give the orchestra some of the guitar melodies and have the guitars do something else for once. Have the strings add some playful pizzicatos and the woodwinds some accents during clean sections. Have the string sections add some rhythmic staccato or marcato instead of just following the chords with boring legato for most of the song. Do something interesting with the orchestra that amounts to more than just having a keyboarder play along with a string ensemble patch!

Most of the classics and rockers didn't really benefit from the orchestra and the songs that were enhanced at least a bit were mostly the epics, which shouldn't be too surprising. Blood Brothers and Dance Of Death have some orchestral backing in the studio version, so they were suited for more elaborate orchestrations. Fear Of The Dark worked well too and I particularly liked the added guitar harmony to the main riff; similar idea to the third Trooper harmony that was added from 2003 onwards. The intro to Hallowed Be Thy Name was enhanced by the orchestra as well and helped create a thick atmosphere.
My highlight from the entire video was Wasting Love though. The new intro wasn't necessarily mind blowing, but it was something new at the very least! They dared to try something, to give the orchestra the spotlight, even if only for a few measures. Once the band joined in the arrangement was identical to the Maiden version again, but at least the orchestra had a bit more interesting parts than they had for most of the concert.

I would've like some actual arranging to be done. Actually change stuff like the tempo; add entirely new counter-melodies for the orchestra; have parts where the metal instruments drop away entirely (maybe let the drums stay) and have the orchestra play backing and give the vocalist the spotlight. Funnily enough there have been various orchestra tours of video game franchises like Zelda, Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts in the last 10 years and those do so much more interesting things with the orchestra. They don't just play the originals as close as possible; they often change the originals radically. Yeah, I get that the audience for such a show consists of die hards and in the case of the Brave Maiden show they love the original versions of the songs, but wouldn't a hardcore crowd like that appreciate some wildcards? Who knows, maybe I'm the weird one in this case, but while this project was fun to listen to once, I won't return to this in the future because it doesn't give me any reason to. A bit of a shame, really.

Sorry for the ranting. I listen to orchestral (and choral) music a lot, so it's a bit of a pet peeve of mine.
 
I was legit deciding on making a similar thread on how there should be an 'Iron Maiden S&M' album (like Metallica did). What could be the setlist and all. While the obvious ones could be the classics Hallowed Be Thy Name or Fear Of The Dark. Even though the Blaze albums may not be my top favourites, I think those songs would work perfectly in an orchestral setting. Just imagine songs like Como Estais Amigos, Don't Look To The Eyes Of A Stranger, getting the "S&M" treatment!
 
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