Metal Reviews

I'll find that little fvcker!!!!

Well the true definition of bland is bland = suckiness so I'd say if it sounds bland it sucks.

I guess that's ok with me.

Pretty average track again. I don't know if it is going to make a difference if the track on the album is longer. The whole chorus is repeated thrice towards the end which isn't appealing at all. I just hope the fact that the title track is almost 9 minutes long means we will hear more of the chorus. The good part is, Bruce sounds better on this track than he did on El Dorado where I felt he sounded like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg8qEOsq ... re=related

Track-by-track first impression at EMI listening party

http://www.radiometal.com/article/new-i ... ck,1140/en

"A new era has come; Maiden don’t know how to write hits anymore."

"After the fifth clean intro, you cannot help but smile. You just have to deal with it; today Maiden is a progressive metal band - albeit a good one"


I wonder if this is why they chose to tour with Dream Theater?

I guess we will be getting AMOLAD II. I'm ok with that. By saying Maiden don't know how to write hits anymore, I guess the author was referring to the shorter single stuff. That was expected since for AMOLAD, Steve Harris refused to cut down the length of The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg before releasing it as a single. Maiden never gets much radio play anyway. I think they have already established themselves as a premier metal band and don't need singles to carry them through.

I've also noticed that Maiden in recent years (last 6-7 years) have struggled to write a catchy shorter song. There's no secret about that, I'm sure we've all noticed this. The longer, epic tracks are more interesting and catchy.

It seems these days that any Maiden song around and under the 5 minute mark have been average at best. While this is my opinon, I include tracks like Different World, Gates Of Tomorrow, Wildest Dreams and The Pilgrim. There are exceptions to this though, with excellent recent short tracks like The Wicker Man, The Fallen Angel, Rainmaker and New Frontier. Granted they don't have the same kick as the classic ones from decades ago...

I wonder if that is the reason why Maiden are writing so many longer songs these days, to cover over the shortcomings from the lack of substance there is with recent short tracks? Really though, after 30 years of writing songs, it must get very difficult after a while to come up with something new and epic every time.

They need to look at Powerslave to know what good epic songs are.

Not just Powerslave, but almost every album has at least one epic lengthy track: Seventh Son, Alexander The Great, Dream Of Mirrors, Dance Of Death, To Tame A Land, Paschendale, Sign Of The Cross, For The Greater Good Of God, The Clansman

Heard the whole song. There's about 3 minutes of industral, atmospheric music leading up to Bruce beginning to sing, then the music takes a pause, and the video part starts up. Between the buildup and the clarity afforded by the lack of sound effects, I think it sounds much better this way.

Nonetheless, the conclusions I've drawn from this and El Dorado:

1. This album won't be as bland as I thought AMOLAD was. It has more life and "kick" to it, like Dance of Death. I like this much.

2. This is going to be the fucking weirdest Maiden album in years. The whole song of the Final Frontier sounds (to me) like the most experimental thing they've done since Somewhere in Time. Still have to hear the whole album to know whether I like it.

The album is out already, and it is indeed weird as fuck.

It's out how?

leakers mcgee duh.

Yep.. It's pretty unorthodox really.. Sounds much better now right after seeing them live, and well, it's growing on me.

So, looks like it will be AMOLAD in terms of length of songs, but with some experimentation. Should be interesting. Only 8 more days to go.

So far, it isn't even close to AMOLAD, in my opinion at least. I would rate AMOLAD around 85-90 so you know.

That's what I assumed he was talking about, but I just wanted to make sure. :-P I only sampled some other songs, decided not to listen to them fully until the album is out...

Album came out here today in Australia...

Just finished listening to it. All I can say is WOW! It's fucking brilliant. While I think the start to "Satellite 15...The Final Frontier" is a little strange and overdrawn, and "The Alchemist" is IMO the weakest track on the album, songs like "El Dorado", "Mother Of Mercy", "Coming Home", "Isle Of Avalon" and "The Talisman" are fantastic.

I must say though, that the final track "When The Wild Wind Blows" is one of their best tracks ever. Musically speaking, it just goes up another level and has such a brilliant aura to it.

The Final Frontier blows AMOLAD away, it just has more passion, more excitement, more depth.

I'm eager to hear what everyone else thinks of this album...

I listened to it three times since last night and I would agree with metal_xxx's assesment. There's nothing on this album that would make me want to hear it again, so for me personally this one ranks with the likes of No Prayer For The Dying and Fear of the Dark. To clarify, on those two albums I felt that Maiden were struggling for new ideas, a fresh direction, and cohesiveness. Even though both albums had signature Maiden tone and writing, overall, they just fell really short in quality which made listening to those albums very laborious for me. The Final Frontier sounds unimaginative, derivative, and predictable as Iron Maiden keep going to the same well over and over and over again. For lack of a better descriptive, this album makes them sound - old.

My opinion may change (and I'm open to that) but that would require me wanting to hear this album again, which I don't. This is certainly the weakest Iron Maiden album since the return of Bruce and Adrian in 2000. Brave New World, Dance of Death, and A Matter of Life and Death are by far superior albums.