It leaps from acoustic ballad opening, to crunching Black Sabbath-ish riffing, to warp-speed drumming and guitar pyrotechnics. It says something about the sheer quality of The Number of the Beast that a song as good as Children of the Damned feels like something of a deep cut. Conversely, he sets this burst of existential self-doubt to the kind of nailed-on chorus guaranteed to keep Maiden in business for the foreseeable future.Ĩ0s hey (hair) day … (from left) Dave Murray, Bruce Dickinson, Steve Harris, Nicko McBrain and Adrian Smith. Lyrically, a deeply odd, anomalous Maiden track, on which Smith seems to be questioning the point of being in the band. The Immigrant Song-like chug bears a soaring chorus, and the lyrics apparently view its doomed hero as a symbol of freedom and rebellion. The track that launched the Piece of Mind album, Flight of Icarus was a slightly abstruse choice of first single – it doesn’t have The Trooper’s grab-you-by-the-throat quality – but it’s fantastic. Fuelled by a rasping, believably street-tough grittiness, it deals in a noticeably different kind of rawness and power. Wrathchild (1981)ĭickinson is obviously Maiden’s greatest vocalist, but if you wanted to hear what Di’Anno brought to the band, then Wrathchild – the saga of a man searching for his absent father – would be perfect evidence. If you must have Dickinson, there’s a great 2020 live version. Iron Maiden’s years with Bayley as frontman are under-rated, but even their loudest critic should have a place in their heart for The Clansman – Harris-penned, Braveheart-inspired and Bayley’s finest moment. Paul Di’Anno (centre) with Dave Murray and Steve Harris at Hammersmith Odeon in 1980. They have never played it live, which seems a shame. Unfairly overshadowed by the historical epics on their previous LP, Powerslave, the closing track from Somewhere in Time is far better than its reputation suggests, with impeccably detailed lyrics: “He spread Hellenism far and wide … he paved the way for Christianity”. You can hear it on Blood Brothers: the verses have a hint of folk about them, the chorus is pure emotive singalong, that seems to tangentially reference Dickinson’s return. With due respect to the unfairly maligned Blaze Bayley, there was no mistaking the upswing when Dickinson returned after seven years to the vocalist’s role on Brave New World. Relatively short and straightforwardly hard hitting, it sounds appealingly like the basic essence of Maiden in concentrated form. Most of 1988’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son LP – a concept album – was suitably proggy, but The Evil That Men Do kicks against that particular trend. east London – in a desire for escape from grim urban reality. It’s sharp, punchy and founded – despite the lyrical references to LA, which sound like the wishful work of someone who has never been further than Leytonstone. Running Free (1980)įounded on a warp-speed take on glam’s glitterbeat, Running Free is Maiden’s early, Paul Di’Anno-fronted years in miniature. The lyrics of the two-part saga of Charlotte the Harlot, a sort of metal equivalent of the Police’s Roxanne, haven’t aged terribly well – “All the men that are constantly drooling / It’s no life for you, stop all that screwing” – but the music on 22 Acacia Avenue is taut, dramatic and utterly thrilling. Among Maiden’s multitude of war epics, it might be the most brutal and horrifying – it certainly doesn’t sound like the work of multimillionaires in their 60s. Harris summarised 2006’s acclaimed LP A Matter of Life and Death as “heavier than we’ve ever been”, which certainly fits The Longest Day. The Somewhere in Time LP generated a degree of controversy among Iron Maiden diehards for its flagrant use of – gasp! – synthesisers, but the notion that this newfound interest might blunt their sound is demolished by the Adrian Smith-penned Sea of Madness: prima facie evidence that the album is under-rated. Dickinson performed Dance of Death live dressed as the Grim Reaper, summing the track up: it’s knowingly preposterous and genuinely gripping. “Let me tell you a story to chill the bones …” opens Dickinson in hammy style that has more to do with horror films than Dance of Death’s actual inspiration, Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Hell on Earth (2021)Ģ021’s Senjutsu is a double album that’s best devoured in full – evidence that, nearly 50 years after they formed, Iron Maiden are in a remarkable creative purple patch – but if you had to pick one track, it might be the Harris-penned closer Hell on Earth: plaintive and explosive, with a killer vocal. Bruce Dickinson and Janick Gers at Wembley Arena in 1993.
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