Your Maiden blasphemy

harrisdevot said:
Would you please provide a link to your previous statments? I'd love to read more on your opinion on that matter.
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I have no idea how to find those posts, so I’ll give some general thoughts here. Several of the songs sound, musically, lifted straight off of Virtual Xi, such as the title track, Dream of Mirrors, and blood brothers. It’s also known that at least four of BNW’s songs came from the VXI writing sessions. Pretty sure I just listed three of them.

My opinion is that, generally, if you take VXI, and have Bruce and Adrian play on it, no Blaze, and better production, you’d have an album that would sound remarkably like Brave New World.

There’s a sort of light/positivity that runs through both albums. Both albums have these sort of jangly guitar intros, “happy” vocals, and both albums lack the sort of dark/brooding sound from albums like X Factor, AMOLAD or Senjutsu.

Another way of wording my original point would be to say that if you took Steve and Janick’s songwriting from VXI, improved the production and the players, it’d sound a lot like BNW. It’s not a perfect 1:1 comparison, but I hear a lot of the same musical themes on both.

A similar comparison would be Somewhere in Time > Seventh Son. Seventh Son takes a lot of the musical DNA of SIT and goes farther with it, but both albums pair well with the other. In the case of VXI, it’s more pronounced due to the change in production and personnel.
 
chaosapiant said:
I have no idea how to find those posts, so I’ll give some general thoughts here. Several of the songs sound, musically, lifted straight off of Virtual Xi, such as the title track, Dream of Mirrors, and blood brothers. It’s also known that at least four of BNW’s songs came from the VXI writing sessions. Pretty sure I just listed three of them.

My opinion is that, generally, if you take VXI, and have Bruce and Adrian play on it, no Blaze, and better production, you’d have an album that would sound remarkably like Brave New World.

There’s a sort of light/positivity that runs through both albums. Both albums have these sort of jangly guitar intros, “happy” vocals, and both albums lack the sort of dark/brooding sound from albums like X Factor, AMOLAD or Senjutsu.

Another way of wording my original point would be to say that if you took Steve and Janick’s songwriting from VXI, improved the production and the players, it’d sound a lot like BNW. It’s not a perfect 1:1 comparison, but I hear a lot of the same musical themes on both.

A similar comparison would be Somewhere in Time > Seventh Son. Seventh Son takes a lot of the musical DNA of SIT and goes farther with it, but both albums pair well with the other. In the case of VXI, it’s more pronounced due to the change in production and personnel.
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Thanks a lot for those (convincing) developments. I had the same feel with Dream of Mirrors and Blood Brothers, but never thought about the whole album in that perspective.
 
chaosapiant said:
I have no idea how to find those posts, so I’ll give some general thoughts here. Several of the songs sound, musically, lifted straight off of Virtual Xi, such as the title track, Dream of Mirrors, and blood brothers. It’s also known that at least four of BNW’s songs came from the VXI writing sessions. Pretty sure I just listed three of them.
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Not quite. Dream of Mirrors, The Mercenary and The Nomad are the three VXI leftovers. Blood Brothers was according to official word not complete in time for VXI but still probably counts as originating from the same time period. BNW is all new, it even has Bruce's lyrics on it.
 
Ruflux said:
Not quite. Dream of Mirrors, The Mercenary and The Nomad are the three VXI leftovers. Blood Brothers was according to official word not complete in time for VXI but still probably counts as originating from the same time period. BNW is all new, it even has Bruce's lyrics on it.
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That’s fair. Either way my point still stands. The title track itself could be ripped straight from the album and put inbetween Futureal and Angel and The Chorus and you’d never think it was an odd standout.
 
MindRuler said:
To be honest: I can very well imagine Blaze singing the BNW chorus. :wub:
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I could also hear him doing Mercenary (for good reason) Fallen Angel, and Silent Planet. I’m on the fence about Thin Line. It’s got a lot of the same vibe as songs from the Blaze Era, but I’m so used to Bruce hitting ridiculous high-notes that I can’t mentally transpose Blaze into the song.
 
chaosapiant said:
I could also hear him doing Mercenary (for good reason) Fallen Angel, and Silent Planet. I’m on the fence about Thin Line. It’s got a lot of the same vibe as songs from the Blaze Era, but I’m so used to Bruce hitting ridiculous high-notes that I can’t mentally transpose Blaze into the song.
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Can we go even further? What about some Dance Of Death songs? No More Lies would fit him like a glove... Paschendale!
 
MindRuler said:
Can we go even further? What about some Dance Of Death songs? No More Lies would fit him like a glove... Paschendale!
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It’s possible, but I think at a certain point we’re hearing Maiden songs where the DNA is infused across so many albums I can’t say for certain whether it’d work with Blaze or not. Lies in particular is from the same mold as songs like Hallowed and Fear of the Dark: slow intro, sing along chorus, semi epic song length at 6-8 minutes and only a small handful of riffs and ideas repeated. I’m not versed in musical theory so I hope what I’m saying makes sense. Songs like Hallowed, Fear, Lies, almost form a trilogy to me where their ideas have a ton of overlap. Sign of the Cross and possibly Clansman are of the same ilk. Compared to say, Rime, or Wind or Red and Black, those songs aren’t nearly as complex.

That said, there’s still a lot of Blaze DNA in Maiden to this day. Most songs starting with a slower intro started on The X Factor. Prior to that, maybe one or two songs per album would start like that.

Edit: Thinking of it more, I’d drop SotC from the list but still think it applies to Clansman.
 
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I rate Alexander the Great 9/10. The middle part is perfect but lyrics are messed up and I’d like it to end during its cinematic phase without coming back to lyrics.
 
Edington said:
Of Steve's eighties epics I consider it second weakest after To Tame A Land. That has a similar problem to AtG, awesome music but lyrics that sound like Steve just rehashed the source material.
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I was ready to agree than you dared to trash ‘To Tame a Land’ which is unparalleled in my mind. For some
reason I take the ridiculous lyrics deadly seriously but I can’t extend the same kindness to AtG.
 
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