The Lack of Editing
It's sort of funny
to hear the term “modern Maiden” as Brave New
World was released fifteen years ago, that's older than many popular
bands nowadays! I guess that's a testimonial to the brits' long and
thunderous career? Anyhow, the fifth album since the return of Bruce
“badass” Dickinson, The Book of
Souls is
certainly an adventurous album but there's some
issues
plaguing the ninety plus minute trip to really achieve the double
album nirvana, it's
still a pretty good album though.
The
usual argument against double albums is that fact that most of them
would be much better as a single disc and this is true for this
record too. If they had to learn anything from Judas Priest, it was
obviously to never do a double album. Too bad. The four previous
Maiden (and also The X Factor)
could
had seen their lengths considerably reduced and I was hoping that
after The Final Frontier, Harris
and the boys would finally write a more concise release. Nope, it's
their longest and most tedious one ever. The length is not
necessarily the issue here, the problem with many of these songs is
that they're just way too long for their own sake like “The Red and
the Black” and its thirteen minutes. It's
like good meat but with way too much fat that your butcher forgot to
remove. With a career spawning
many decades, they decided to do whatever the fuck they wanted and I
must salute this even
if it didn't work.
Nevertheless,
it's still Maiden being Maiden, there's many brilliant
moments here such as the psychedelic almost western spaghetti intro
of “If Eternity Should Fail”, one of the best songs on the album
and the first out of two to be written solely by Dickinson. The
other being their longest song ever, the eighteen minutes epic closer
“Empire of the Clouds”. The use of piano on this track is
interesting and it's some sort of subtle historical opera, it's not
the disaster I was expecting, really. It's
one of the only track that actually feels shorter than it truly is
and I liked how it's built. Outside
of the long tracks, the shorter ones doesn't always work quite well
(“Speed of Light” is underwhelming) and some of these were also
disposable. “The Man of Sorrows” or “The Great Unknown” are
pretty damn great, the whole thing could had been tighter, it's all.There's no superb fast paced tracks like "The Mercenary" here and it's a shame.
It's
a varied and dark album but the classic Maiden leads are always there
to lift your spirit. The instrumentation is once again top notch and
I appreciate that the bass isn't in your face as much as on some
other of the albums. Since
Steve
Harris is less involved than usual due
to some personal issues,
it's a more democratic
effort and it's a cool thing. We have the acoustic leanings of Janick
Gers (a
totally
underrated guitarist) on the title track, the proggy AOR approach of
Adrian Smith on “Speed of Light” or the long-winded epic formula
of Harris. It's a vast album and
has everything to please everyone but it's hard to digest as a whole
in one sitting, it's like stuffing your face with fifteen hot dogs.
I like Bruce's rough and mature voice, I think he aged well and isn't straining too much. The lyrics are also great (most of the time), they're not too cheesy and deals with death in a meaningful way. Maiden at this point is an experienced band and I can't quite say that they sound tired, they're not exactly rehashing ideas even though most of the album is nothing new. It's hard to find a band this old who's still able to be as invigorated except maybe for Rush.
As
a fifty minutes album, this would had been spectacular but
ninety-two
minutes is just overwhelming. I
tend to listen to my favorite parts and ignore skip some of the
weaker moments, that's something I hate to do since I love listening
to albums as a whole. Can't we just get a short album for once, guys?
A
new Maiden album remains a big
event
but I can't say that I was completely satisfied with this one.
Nonetheless,
when it's good, it's freaking good.
No comments:
Post a Comment