Trollheart's Comprehensive Guide to Iron Maiden

[Trollheart]

Track title: "When the Wild Wind Blows"
Album: The Final Frontier
Year: 2010
Written by: Steve Harris
Subject: The fear of nuclear war
Type: Epic
Length: 10:59
Familiar? I kind of remember it a little
Rating: 5/10
Seriously? Another track from The Final Frontier? And this one an epic, a Steve Harris-penned monster just one second shy of eleven minutes. I half remember liking this though – and as I said in the last entry I was not impressed by the album on my one listen, so maybe this is a good sign – and I know it certainly made some impression on me at the time. Whether that was good or bad, I guess we'll see. Wind sounds, unsurprisingly, to start it off and then a dark instrumental intro which turns into something of a "Fear of the Dark" idea, but in fairness is not too long. It's one of those doomsayer songs, about, I assume, nuclear war. Quite restrained for the first two minutes before it breaks loose, though in fairness again it's just Bruce's voice getting louder; the song basically stays the same for now. The guitars get a little harder, yeah, but not a huge change really.

Good instrumental section around the middle when the guitars fire up and get going properly, kind of a militaristic feel to the melody – rather apt I guess – but it's hard to see how this isn't stretched out way too long. I mean, eleven minutes? No way it needs to be that long. It's the closing track, so maybe they felt like they wanted to make a statement, and it's not that it's a bad song, not at all, but like I said before about Steve, others need to rein him in. This could be eight, nine minutes tops. The guys do fill in the time with some good solos, but a well-written song shouldn't need things to fill it out. Then, again like "Fear of the Dark", we reprise the opening by returning to where the song began. Hmm. Still not convinced really.

[Trollheart]

Track title: "The Edge of Darkness"
Album: The X Factor
Year: 1995
Written by: Steve Harris/Blaze Bayley/Janick Gers
Subject: Vietnam?
Type: Slow brooder to fast rocker. Um.
Length: 6:39
Familiar? No
Rating: 4/10
Ah well, it had to happen some time! Here we go with a track, the first track – in this thread, not on the album – from the much and in my view correctly-maligned first album following Bruce Dickinson's departure. I've been unremitting in my critcism of this album, but has that been fair? I haven't listened to it again since it was released, so that's over twenty years now, so perhaps I'll have mellowed towards it, or some of it. Yeah...

It's got a dark, brooding opening anyway, which actually reminds me seriously of Bon Jovi's "As My Guitar Lies Bleeding In My Arms" (shut up; what do you know?) and the vocal when it comes in from Bayley first is low and almost muttered, but then he explodes into life as Nicko's drums pound in alongside the guitars with a sort of staccato beat before the familiar Maiden riffs come in and the song starts to trip along. Blazing solos coming in now as Bayley fades out, coming back in strongly but then everything slows down and the rhythm returns to that staccato thing I was talking about earlier, fading out on almost acoustic guitar as Bayley's voice murmurs the last lines. Okay, not terrible, but a long way from the kind of thing I expect from Maiden.

[Trollheart]

Track title: "The Wicker Man"
Album: Brave New World
Year: 2000
Written by: Adrian Smith/Steve Harris/Bruce Dickinson
Subject: Old legends and old gods
Type: Fast rocker
Length: 4:35
Familiar? Yes
Rating: 9/10
Now we're talking! After what I may have mentioned once or twice already I consider two lacklustre albums, Maiden came powering back to kick the new millennium in the teeth, armed with Bruce back behind the mike, Adrian slinging on his guitar again and the band with a whole new sense of purpose. Brave New World was the album that, briefly, showed me that Maiden were not a spent force, though sadly this did not continue and so far as I can see the albums from here tailed off badly till we're where we are today. This one lights the fuse on the bomb that brought Maiden back from the dead, almost, and it's a killer, mixed metaphors notwithstanding.

From the first riffs you can hear a new energy and excitement that has been lacking, especially on The X Factor, and it's great to hear Bruce back in charge. I have nothing against Blaze Bayley, but I was delighted to see the main man back. And he sounds happy to be back too, as he snarls "Your time will come!" And it has. I don't think there's a bad track on this album, and "The Wicker Man" is the perfect way to start it off. Fast, powerful riffs, simple, to the point lyric and of course those solos, but above all, this sounds like a band revitalised, re-energised and, as I said before, crawling out of the grave the last two albums had pushed them into. It could only get better from here on in, I thought joyfully, and as far as this album is concerned, I was right. But on a more general level, I was unfortunately rather overstating the case. But forget that for now and just glory in the Second Coming of Maiden, and try, if you can, not to headbang to this! Hell, I don't even mind the "Whoa-oh-oh-oh"s!

[Guybrush]

Oh man. I remember this very well even though I don't think I've heard it in 20 years or so. It was definitely being played at the parties I went to in the early 00s, probably until Turbonegro released Scandinavian Leather in 2003 and took over the party rock niche

[Trollheart]

Time to give those who are unfamiliar with this band of bands a crash course in who Iron Maiden are, and why they're consistently at the top of the heavy metal tree, even when they don't have a new album out, their last, at the time of writing, having been five years ago.

As a band who have lasted through almost forty-five years of the music business, and forty in terms of recorded output, Maiden have gone through some changes, not only in personnel but in their overall sound and their approach to their music. I actually see them as having had four distinct stages, which I will detail below.

Though there will be few who will  not at least know the name Iron Maiden, it's possible that some of you younger 'uns may not realise that the "classic" lineup we see today is not how it always was, Indeed, of the current band members, only Steve Harris and Dave Murray were there at the beginning.

Part One: Killers Runnin' Free On the Rue Morgue:
Formation and the Di'Anno Years

Formed in 1975 by bass player Harris, Iron Maiden went through a few guitarists, singers and drummers before they came up with what would be their first "real" lineup, under which they would record and release their first ever recording, an EP called The Soundhouse Tapes, which rapidly sold out. Two of the tracks on that EP, "Prowler" and the eponymous "Iron Maiden", would later feature on their first album, which they would also self-title. In 1979 Maiden signed to the huge label EMI, and had two other tracks included on a heavy metal compilation album called Metal for Muthas. These were "Sanctuary" and "Wrathchild", the latter of which would again feature on their debut album for the label.

In 1980 Maiden had the following lineup: Steve Harris (bass), Dave Murray (guitar), Clive Burr (drums) Paul Di'Anno (vocals) and Dennis Stratton (guitar), though Stratton left the band a few months later, to be replaced by Adrian Smith, who remains with them to this day. The album was a huge hit, with its raw power and yet melodic tracks, and Iron Maiden became one of the bands to spearhead the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) which signalled a renaissance of the heavy metal movement in the UK and led to the formation of some major bands.

The debut album featured a scary creature on the cover, a half-skeletal, half-humanoid monster with long spiky hair, who would become the band's mascot and sigil, and would feature, in different guises, on most Iron Maiden album covers. They called him Eddie the 'ead, though he was usually just known as Eddie. In keeping with the theme/layout of each album Eddie would take on different characteristics. For Powerslave, for instance, with its mystical and eastern themes and its title track written about an Egyptian god, Eddie was a pharaoh on the cover, while for Somewhere in Time, with its futuristic setting, he was an alien hunter. Here, he is just seen looking out at you from the cover, standing in a street at night and looking very evil and scary. He looks like he's ready to kill.



Eddie was the creation of artist Derek Riggs, who would go on to illustrate all the Maiden sleeves and bring his often warped sense of creativity to each new one. One thing was certain: a Maiden cover was never boring! But what about the music? Well, as mentioned, it was raw and powerful, with a double guitar attack that would become the trademark of Iron Maiden, but I personally found the production very shoddy. Notable tracks from the album are "Phantom of the Opera", with its instantly recognisable guitar intro, which found fame when it was used for a Lucozade ad in the 80s. At the time, it was also their longest and most ambitious song, clocking in at over seven minutes and with distinct sections, or movements within it.

Also on the album is "Transylvania", an instrumental, one of very few that Maiden ever wrote. It's punchy, powerful and very much part of the Iron Maiden sound. They also included a ballad on the album, which again would be few and far between as Maiden reached for the heavy metal stardom that would be theirs. "Strange World" features some really nice echo guitar work from Murray and is almost prog rock in its theme of a world without laughter. It's also a very good vehicle for the softer side of Di'Anno's vocals, which apart from this song always seem to be a snarl. "Remember Tomorrow" actually fools you into thinking it's a ballad, but you're soon disabused of that notion as it kicks into top gear and Di'Anno starts screaming.

The album also features, as mentioned, "Prowler" from The Soundhouse Tapes and also the title track, which would become something of an anthem for the band. Their second album, Killers was released the following year, and this time Eddie is seen as a homicidal maniac on the cover, sporting a bloodstained hatchet, and indeed referred to generally in the lyric to the title track. Another old song, the one featured on the compilation album, is included on this album, and indeed after the short opening instrumental "The Ides of March", it's "Wrathchild" that opens the album proper.

This album was very much a Steve Harris project, as he wrote every song on it bar the title track, which was co-written with Paul Di'Anno. The album also features "Murders in the Rue Morgue", based loosely on the Edgar Allan Poe horror short story, and another ballad, the superlative "Prodigal Son", but the title track is the crux of the album, and features Di'Anno in full madman mode, revelling in his narrative as the shadowy killer who "Walks in the subway/ His eyes burn a hole in your back!/ A footstep behind you/ He lunges, prepared for attack!" The guitars on this song need to be heard to be believed. Di'Anno goes out in a blaze of glory, roaring his lungs out on the closer "Drifter", and in fact his scream is the last sound on the album, bar the final guitar chord.

[Trollheart]

Part Two: No Prayer for the Powerslaves, Somewhere in Time: Bruce Dickinson and Global Domination

After Killers Di'Anno was asked to leave the band due to various disputed reasons, and they hooked up with Bruce Dickinson, who had been singing with Samson. It was with him at the mike that they recorded their ultra-successful 1982 album, The Number of the Beast, which shot straight to number one and is recommended as one of the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die in the book of the same name by Robert Dimery. The whole style of the album is different, perhaps due to songwriting being shared, perhaps due to the presence and charisma of Dickinson, or perhaps it was just a natural evolution of the band. But the overall feel of "The Beast" is of polished production, excellent songwriting, powerful and technically-proficient playing and indeed a band who are all on the same page. Possibly the conflicts with first Dennis Stratton and then Paul Di'Anno may have strained the atmosphere during the recording of the first two albums, but there is no such tension evident here.

Featuring songs like "22 Acacia Avenue" (subtitled "The Continuing Ddventures of Charlotte the Harlot", who is seen in a song titled with her name on the first Maiden album), "The Prisoner", for which the band had to gain permission from Patrick McGoohan to use audio clips from the cult TV series in the intro, and of course the two singles, "Run to the Hills" and the title track, this was, in all ways possible, a monster album. "Run to the Hills" shot to number seven in the charts, and is a powerful indictment of the treatment by the White Man of the Native Americans, featuring a killer guitar solo from Dave Murray and some singing which would earn Bruce his nickname of "Air-raid Siren"! The title track, and indeed the album title and artwork, earned Maiden the tag of Satanists, and true to form, the Religious Right in America sought to ban the sale of the album (and all Iron Maiden records, extended of course to other "questionable" metal bands), boycotted the gigs and burned their albums. What was that they said: "Where they burn books (or albums), they will later burn people."

Laughing at this accusation, but nevertheless hurting from the adverse publicity and the boycotts of and protests at gigs, Steve Harris, as the face of the band, declared that far from being an anthem or prayer to the Devil, "The Number of the Beast" was based on a nightmare he had after watching one of the Omen films, and the track even has a passage from the bible preceding it. But you can't tell the Moral Majority they've got it wrong, and the mud stuck.

Nevertheless, fans and heavy metal pundits alike loved the album, and it still stands for me as one of Iron Maiden's best. It also contains one of my own favourites from them, and indeed a firm fan favourite too, the epic "Hallowed Be Thy Name", which closes the album and runs to just over seven minutes. It tells the story of a man about to be hanged, and his thoughts as they lead him out to the gallows. It's quite an introspective piece for such a heavy song, starting off with doomy church bells (actually referred to in the lyric when he says "I'm waiting in my cold cell/ When the bells begin to chime.") and featuring some great guitar work from both Adrian Smith and Dave Murray.

For the next decade Iron Maiden were prolific in their releases, a new album usually being no more than two years from the previous. In between they of course toured extensively and released some live albums, of which Live After Death, released in 1984, is regarded as their best. 1983 however saw the emergence of their fourth studio album, Piece of Mind, with the obvious play on words in the title. It features this time Eddie in a straitjacket and imprisoned in a "rubber room", with part of his brain missing, ergo the title. Despite the obvious imagery of madness, however, the album did not deal with the subject of insanity: rather, the songs were mostly influenced by or about books or films the lads enjoyed.

Piece of Mind was the first album to feature new drummer Nicko McBrain, ex-Trust, who is still with Maiden to this day. It only featured two singles, but they were both very successful, just missing getting into the top ten. "The Trooper" is a powerful, rollicking story of the Charge of the Light Brigade, while "Flight of Icarus", with its heavy guitar intro, tells the legend of, well, Icarus. Other good tracks on the album include "Die with Your Boots on", "Where Eagles Dare" (based on the WWII movie) and "Sun and Steel", loosely based around the sword-and-sorcery heroes of fantasy literature like Conan and Kull. There's another epic on the album, again closing it, this time taking as its subject matter the Frank Herbert sci-fi series Dune. Called "To Tame a Land" it runs for nearly seven and a half minutes, and is again evidence of Maiden's dabbling in prog metal, towards which they were sliding closer with every album.

Only one year later and they released perhaps their most openly prog album to date, 1984's Powerslave. While it included "boys-own"-type adventures songs like "Aces High" and "Flash of the Blade", and a return to "The Prisoner" from The Number of the Beast in the song "Back in the Village", it was the two closing tracks that really characterised this album. The first being the title track, written from the point of view of an Egyptian god or pharaoh, and evidenced on the sleeve of the album with Eddie depicted as a huge stone statue like the Sphinx, being worshipped as a god. The lyric tells of the pharaoh/god's reluctance to give up life, as he moans "Tell me why I have to be a powerslave?/ I don't wanna die/ I'm a god, why can't I live on?" but he realises at the song's conclusion that he has no more sway over life than the lowliest of his worshippers, as he accepts "In my last hours I'm a slave/ To the power of death." Not surprisingly, the music is eastern-tinged, to give the effect of being in Egypt.

The other standout track is their longest to date, the epic in every way "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", based on the epic poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It features a great bass solo halfway through that really gives the feeling of isolation and fear, and quotes much of the famous poem in the lyrics. There must have been some trepidation on the part of the band that metallers would listen to a song which runs to thirteen and a half minutes, and moreover, is based on a poem over a century and a half old, but it went down a storm thanks to the heavy riffs, powerful singing and, to be fair, gripping lyric, even if they were half-inched from the poem.

1986 and Somewhere in Time hit the shelves. Different to previous albums, mostly due to the writing of Adrian Smith, it features more long compositions, like "The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner" (6:31), "Heaven Can Wait" (7:21) and the title track, "Caught Somewhere in Time" (7:26). In fact, the shortest track on the album is "Deja vu", at 4:56, and even at 7:26 the title track is not the longest: that honour goes, once again, to the closer, this time called "Alexander the Great", and clocking it at a massive 8:36! Again, despite the cover art depicting Eddie as a futuristic bounty-hunter/cyborg killer, the themes on the album range from madness to history to reflections on life. There are two sci-fi/future themed songs, in the title track and "Stranger in a Strange Land", based on the novel by Robert A. Heinlein. With the comparitive lengths of the tracks, there end up only being eight in total.

You could I suppose say that this was also a very prog metal album, with its long compositions and its varied themes, and very few of the "rock till I drop" songs - although even on their earlier recordings Maiden tended to eschew the generic metal themes like beer, women, fighting and who's the loudest. Some of these would find their way into later releases, though Maiden would more or less continue on the road towards total prog metal with each new album. Somewhere in Time also pioneered their use of the guitar synth, belying a legend that had once appeared on the back cover of The Number of the Beast - "No synthesisers or ulterior motives". With the move towards prog metal, it was perhaps inevitable that Iron Maiden would need to introduce some sort of keyboard sound, and this was how they went about it.

This culminated in what became the pinnacle of their progressive metal leanings, 1988's Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, on which the guitar synths were swapped for actual keyboards, played by one Michael Kinney. This album also featured only eight tracks, although the longest, the title track, came in at just under ten minutes, with the next longest, "Infinite Dreams", a mere six minutes. The power and energy was still there, the great melodies and the hooks, and the interesting themes, though many of them were linked or semi-linked in a kind of a fairytale. Some of the better tracks on it, for me, are "Moonchild", the title track, "The Evil that Men Do" and "Only the Good Die Young". It's the first album since The Number of the Beast not to feature an epic closer, with "Only the Good Die Young" clocking in at a mere 4:42.

It was also the last album to feature Adrian Smith, who left the band to return in 2000 for their triumphant Brave New World, an album I look on as their "comeback" album after years in the metal wilderness, of which more later. Seventh Son also gave Maiden some of their highest-charting singles, with "Can I Play with Madness" going to number 3, the highest they had ever achieved.

Rather ironically, Smith had left the band because he was unhappy with the prog-metal direction Maiden were going in, but as soon as he left the next album, 1990's No Prayer for the Dying changed the musical direction and returned to a more hard-edged, rock/metal sound, with shorter songs and more of them. Despite the fact that it was panned by critics, it did yield Maiden their only ever number one single, in the Bruce Dickinson-penned "Bring Your Daughter... to the Slaughter". There are no songs over five minutes on the album, the longest being again the closer, "Mother Russia" being a paltry 4:45.



No Prayer is probably the first Maiden album to feature a whole host of sub-standard songs. The likes of "Public Enema Number One", "The Assassin", "Fate's Warning" and the aforementioned "Mother Russia" just don't cut it for me, and although there are good tracks in "Tailgunner" (basically "Aces High" from Powerslave revisited) and "Holy Smoke", with its stab-back at the Christian Right, and of course "Bring Your Daughter...", there's a lot of dross on this album, probably the least impressive of any Maiden album - at least, under the Dickinson regime - I have ever heard. Maybe they needed Adrian Smith's songwriting abilities more than they realised! On guitar, Smith was replaced by Janick Gers, and there were more changes to come in the years ahead.

Things came to a head in 1992, with the release of their ninth album. Fear of the Dark, although superior to its predecessor, was still not a patch on previous opuses. Retaining the short-song format, and eschewing the prog-metal epics for more basic rock fodder, it nevertheless featured themes like the Gulf War, on the Steve Harris-penned "Afraid to Shoot Strangers", a great track which begins slowly and gets into high gear halfway through, as well as the cowboy-themed "Be Quick or Be Dead", which opens the album, but the vast majority of the tracks are still sub-standard, and if I listen to this album at all, it's very much a cherry-picking operation, and there are a LOT of tracks I skip over.

"Fear is the Key" and "Childhood's End" are decent enough tracks, though both "The Fugitive" and "The Apparition" fail to impress, recalling "The Assassin" from the previous album, and although this is the first Maiden album in some time to feature an actual ballad, "Wasted Love" is, well, wasted really: not a very good song, and adds nothing to the album except a slowing-down of the general mayhem. The best track for me is "Judas Be My Guide", with its soaraway guitar, and the closer, the only long track on the album, and indeed the title track, again written by Harris, and coming in at 7:45. The album is also the first not to feature cover art by longtime illustrator Derek Riggs, and the last produced by Martin Birch, who had been with the band from Killers.

Shortly after the recording of the album, Bruce Dickinson decided he had had enough, and left the band to pursue a short-lived solo career. He would not return until 2000,and in between the band would go through some changes, most bad, and risk losing a large part of their fanbase, before the "return of the king" would take place and sort everything out.

[Suburban Placeholder?]

I Always felt it was a shame that the Killers line up only recorded that one album together.

Adrian Smith really added something missing from the first album, and I guess you could also say the same thing about Martin Birch's production too.
Also I felt Maiden were never really the same band after Dianno & Burr left.

I have bootlegs of both full gigs in Japan that the band recorded and used for their Maiden Japan E.P. with that line up and they were really on fire.

[Trollheart]

Part three: The Virtual X Factor:
 Blaze and the wilderness years

Following the departure of Bruce Dickinson, Maiden were left with the job of finding a replacement for the charismatic frontman. This was no mean feat: Dickinson had helmed the band for ten years, and fans had got used to his powerful presence, and voice, so it was really no great surprise that the idea of someone taking over from him was greeted with mostly scepticism and in some cases outright anger by the faithful. Nonetheless, on October 2 1995, three years after Bruce's departure, Iron Maiden released their tenth studio album, the aptly-named X-factor, featuring new singer Blaze Bayley, recently of Wolfsbane.

The album was quite a departure from standard Iron Maiden fare, and much different to the last few releases. It was, for a start, a lot darker, something that might be expected given Dickinson's mostly unexpected departure, and Harris returned to writing most of the material, with input from the new guy and the "other new guy", guitarist Janick Gers. I found most of it not to be up to scratch, and whereas Fear of the Dark had suffered from its share of problems, I could find few songs on this album I liked.

It probably doesn't help that the guys turned their usual practice upside-down, having the longest track at the opening of the album rather than closing it, and the eleven-minute "Sign of the Cross" just didn't pique my interest, leaving me with a long time to wait, getting more and more frustrated as the song went on, and on, and on, before the next track up hit my ears. That was "Lord of the flies", and to be fair, I really liked that, more like the Iron Maiden I knew. Following that was "Man on the Edge", the first single from the album, and to be fair it's not bad: kind of reminds me of "Back in the Village" from Powerslave.

It's not that the album is terrible, but given the heights Maiden were capable of reaching (and had reached), this just felt like a very lacklustre album. I also personally felt (and I wasn't the only one by any means) that Blaze Bayley was no replacement for Bruce Dickinson. Oh, he could sing, sure, but to replace THE voice of Iron Maiden they were going to have had to come up with someone very special indeed, and he wasn't it. Always felt to me like he was constantly dealing with (as he probably was) the stigma of being Dickinson's successor, and trying to live up to that. I would not have wanted to have been in his place, that's for sure.

It was three years later before Maiden tried again, with the release of Virtual XI, the last album they would record with Bayley. To give him credit, the guy seemed by now to have found his place in the band: he sounded more confident, more sure of himself and probably felt like he belonged. Rather ironic then that after this album he would leave the band. My problem with the "Blaze" Iron Maiden was twofold: first, there's no Bruce Dickinson. I only really got into Maiden via Number of the Beast, and then backtracked, and whereas I could tolerate Paul Di'Anno, he wasn't a patch on Bruce. The second problem I have is that in a very real way they seemed to be retreading old ground, taking bits from previous songs and recycling them into new ones.

There was a third problem, although personally I didn't see it as such, but it was something of a surprise to see the sudden emergence, even dominance of keyboards on Maiden albums. You can hear this very clearly on "The Angel and the Gambler", where the guitars are pushed very firmly into the background, with the result that what you get is a very commercial-sounding song, but then Maiden had had great commercial success with singles like "Flight of Icarus", "The Trooper" and "Run to the Hills", to mention but a few. And they had never had to compromise on their sound. Here, they begin to sound more like a seventies prog band than a hard-hitting veteram heavy metal legend.

This album was also the shortest, in terms of tracks, since 1988's Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, with only eight tracks, although on overall length it was well up there with the best, at just over fifty-three minutes, yet still nearly twenty minutes shorter than its predecessor. Still, every album to follow it (so far) would be much longer. There's also another point: listening now to the almost ten-minute "Angel and the Gambler", I notice that of those ten minutes, the closing THREE are taken up with the same refrain, with a few guitar solo bits in there, but come on! Did it need to be that long, if all they were going to do was repeat the same line to the end? Like I say, lack of imagination and originality, which had never previously been a problem for the boys.

It's probably quite possible that I'm doing Virtual XI a disservice, as I only really listened to it the once, didn't like it, and am only listening to it for the second time now for this piece, so maybe my opinion would change on repeated listens. The fact remains, however, that every album, from Iron Maiden to Fear of the Dark, I was able to get into on the first listen. That did not happen with either of these, which is why I was overjoyed to hear the announcement in 1999 that Blaze was out, and Bruce was back!

[Trollheart]

Part Four: The Return of the King: A Matter of Soul Dancing in the Brave New World


The return of both Bruce Dickinson and longtime guitarist and founder member (almost) Adrian Smith breathed new life into what was in some ways becoming a tired band who seemed unsure of the direction they were heading in. Janick Gers remained, so that Maiden now had three guitarists, and the new sound was a joy to behold.

Brave New World was well-titled (although it is of course the title of Aldous Huxley's novel), being released in the first months of the new millennium, and with most of the original Maiden lineup back in the fold. The fans reacted as expected, and sellout tours resulted. The album was critically acclaimed as one of Maiden's best ever, ranking up there with The Number of the Beast, Powerslave and Seventh Son: high praise indeed!



2003 saw the release of Dance of Death, which while retaining the heavy classic sound of Maiden, expanded on Brave New World's leaning towards longer, more epic songs and complex structures, tipping the scales towards progressive metal rather than outright metal. Although this came as something of a shock to some, it serves to underline and address the problem I laid out earlier, that the Blaze-era Maiden had little in the way of new, original songs and seemed to be falling back on older melodies and ideas, which served to make both the albums he recorded with Maiden seem a little stale and unimaginative.

Now, to be fair to Blaze, there was definitely a need for a change: Fear of the Dark was largely an unremarkable album, and Dickinson's time away seemed to only have done him, and the band, good, giving them a new zest for their music and a whole host of new ideas. It's sad in a way to see Blaze Bayley as a "placeholder", marking time for the return of Dickinson, but the truth of it is that that's how it turned out, even if that wasn't the original intention. Whatever, the re-energised Iron Maiden were going from strength to strength, and Dance of Death was another step along that path to regained glory, with some excellent tracks in "Rainmaker", "Montsegur" and of course the title track.

One important point to note: this appears to be the beginning of a trend in a move away from the depiction of mascot Eddie on the cover. Up to the last album, Eddie had always been on the sleeve, depicted in various guises as already spoken of, but here, he is absent; though a deathlike figure stands in for him, it's not Eddie. The next two albums, also, would be Eddie-less, and he would not make his triumphant return until their, to date, most recent album. This can't have been any intention to reinvent the band with the return of Bruce, as even during the Blaze era Eddie was there, and indeed, the cover of the comeback album shows Eddie surveying his Brave New World, so I don't know why they changed it. Seems a bad idea, but I guess the fans didn't worry about it too much.

The guitars are back in charge! Steve Harris plays keyboards on the album, but they're nowhere near as much in evidence as they were on the previous album. A track like "The Angel and the Gambler" from that album was basically built on the keyboard melody: here, the keys are very much ancillary, a backup instrument to enhance, not take over or change, the sound. As it should be. Even the longer tracks, like "No More Lies", "Paschendale" and the title track, which could have been filled out with synth and keyboard, are instead crammed with guitar. And why not, with three great axemen?

Let there be no doubt however: Iron Maiden were moving, and continue to move, in a more progressive metal direction, away from the harder, "pure" heavy metal of their early days. They added to their sound, expanding upon it and writing longer and more complicated songs, like the title track, and "Paschendale", both over eight minutes long. Of course, Maiden have never been a stranger to epic songs - "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" still stands as their longest ever, at just over thirteen minutes, but whereas albums prior to the Blaze era had generally tended to have shorter, snappier, more commercial songs - the last really long track before X Factor was the title to 1988's Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. Since the departure, and return of Bruce Dickinson, Maiden tended to shy away from the shorter songs, with seven out of ten of the songs from Brave New World being over six minutes, and six, almost seven of those on this album being of that length ("Montsegur" is 5:50). In fairness, the Blaze albums produced a total of 5/11 for X Factor and 5/8 for Virtual XI, whereas Fear of the Dark boasted a mere 2/12, while not one of No Prayer For the Dying's eleven tracks were over that length, so there has been a definite progression into longer tracks since 1995.

Dance of Death also distinguishes itself from other Maiden albums in being the first album of theirs in twenty years to feature a totally acoustic number, the closer, "Journeyman", very much a departure from form for Maiden, but it works exceptionally well, the more for the fact that it's so unexpected. I think the last acoustic song they did was "Prodigal Son" on 1981's Killers, but don't quote me! Again, no sign of Eddie, even if the soldiers' heads are skulls.


Another three years later saw the release of A Matter of Life and Death, with a somewhat similar title to the previous album, and no doubt a nod back to the live opus Live After Death. No matter what criticism is levelled at them, no-one can deny that Maiden remain the potent force in British Heavy Metal that they always have been, and despite ageing (as we all do), their music is still relevant and powerful, as opener "Different World" shows in spades. Recent Maiden albums have all tended, if not to be actual concept albums, to have a certain theme running through them, and here it's the horrors of war, driven home powerfully by the artwork on the album cover, showing an army of dead marching before a tank, like a modern version of Brueghel's El triunfo de la muerte.

This album maintains the high ratio of long-to-short songs, with songs over six minutes coming in at 7/11, three of these being over eight minutes, with five, almost six over seven minutes. The song structures became more complex and intricate over the last few albums, and here you can certainly see that in tracks like "Brighter Than a Thousand Suns", "The Longest Day" and the closer, and longest (at over nine minutes long) "The Legacy", but even the shorter, snappier songs have their place. "The Pilgrim" is a great little song, although in my own nitpicking opinion Maiden write too many songs with the word "the" in the title!

"Out of the Shadows" revisits one of their favourite themes, that of prophecies and chosen ones, and "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg" features some of Dave Murray's best work since "Powerslave". The album is certainly dark, though to be fair so was the previous one, with its obsession with and examination of the process of death, but it's also an angry album, and there's nowhere the vitriol comes to the fore more than in "For the Greater Good of God", where writer Steve Harris spits out his contempt for the idea of religious wars. This is also the longest track on the album, beating out closer "The Legacy" by two seconds.


2010  saw Iron Maiden release their fifteenth album, the critically acclaimed Final Frontier. This was also their longest ever album, clocking in at an amazing seventy-six minutes thirty-six seconds, with the opening track almost nine minutes long and the closer one second off eleven. Not surprisingly then, the ratio is again 7/10, almost 8, as "Coming Home" runs for 5:52. It's also their best effort since Brave New World, perhaps even since The Number of the Beast. Yeah, it's that good! The figure on the cover could almost be Eddie, but I think it would be wishful thinking. Still we await his return...

Opener and almost-title track "Satellite 15... The Final Frontier" lays down the gauntlet, with a multi-layered, complex and intricate composition, introduced on a lengthy instrumental passage more expected of a prog-rock band. It's actually quite understated and restrained, taking almost four and a half minutes before it finally takes off. "El Dorado", on the other hand, kicks right off from the start, with a very familiar guitar riff (from "Wasted Years", I think) and a great vibe.

The more complex arrangements shine through on tracks like "Isle of Avalon" (which has definite echoes of the title track to Powerslave), "The Talisman" and the epic closer, "When the Wild Wind Blows". There's definitely a sense of Maiden maturing, growing and learning new tricks over the course of the last three or four albums. You can of course hear the common themes leaking in, but there's more than enough new ideas there to make every song stand out on its own merits.


Although everyone - well, all Maiden fans anyway - salivated at the thought of a new Maiden album in 2015, the first for five long years, word coming out of the camp was that there was an epic included on the new album which, lengthwise, would not only supercede "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", but knock it into a cocked hat and possibly kick it down the road too! "Empire of the Clouds", said to be prefaced by a long piano intro - something no Maiden song had ever had before - claimed to be in the twenty-minute range! Probably nobody believed it, and that wasn't quite true, but it is a monster. And speaking of monsters, Eddie is finally back!

Returning the band to the top of the tree, and showing them at the top of their game even after such a long time away, The Book of Souls, the first ever Iron Maiden double album, shot straight to number one in over twenty countries. It certainly was worth the wait, showing that a band who have been together and recording now for almost four decades can still release an album that blows the competition to hell and back. Opener "If Eeternity Should Fail" begins almost acapella, very proglike, with a droned vocal from Dickinson, whose voice has never sounded better, but soon kicks up, while "Speed of Light", the lead single that preceded the release of the album, is back to Maiden headbanging basics, as is "Death or Glory", their third (so far as I can remember anyway) song about flying, this one concerning the exploits of the infamous Red Baron.

The songs mentioned are relatively short and snappy, but that doesn't mean there's no room for epics, as the title track (over ten minutes)and "The Red and the Black" (thirteen) show, but of course, as foreshadowed, the real epic is in the closer, the eighteen-minute Dickinson-penned "Empire of the Clouds." As promised, it does indeed begin with a long acoustic piano intro, and relates the story of the crash of a British airship, an event of which I assume most of us were unaware, and probably don't really care that much about. It's a fine song though, but eighteen minutes is asking a lot from the attention of a metal fan, and I feel it might be slightly overlong.

Nonetheless, it can't be denied that this album, which could have been a mistake, or, worse, phoned in (though when have Maiden ever done that?) proved to be a triumph, a favourite both with the fans and the critics, and shows us there's a whole lot of life left yet in the band, and that any young pretenders who are waiting for them to fall off their throne are going to have a very long wait.


All through their career Iron Maiden have led the field, turning out classic album after classic album, building on their fanbase, playing bigger and bigger venues and opening up the world of heavy metal to successive younger generations. There are few metal bands around today who would not admit to owing at least a little of their success to the venerable elder statesmen of heavy metal, whether it's that they listened to them when younger, or they influenced their style, or even just showed that a bunch of guys from London can scale the heights of worldwide fame with nothing more than their innate talent and some perseverance.

It would be wrong to say Iron Maiden created heavy metal - of course, it was around, though mostly known as hard rock at the time - long before their arrival. But what is in no doubt is that they were one of the shaping forces behind metal, indeed behind rock, and remain so to this day. After almost five decades together, Iron Maiden show no signs of slowing down. They've had their problems, they've been through their changes, but they've come out the other side stronger and more potent than ever before. They've innovated, moved with but not been shaped by the changing trends, and have always remained true to themselves, their fans and their own unique sound.

What was it Ozzy Osbourne said? You can't kill rock and roll? Truer words were never said, and Maiden go from strength to strength, proving that good old-fashioned honesty and hard work is sometimes all you need to make it in this world. Lessons some other bands would do well to take to heart.

Long live the Beast!