Despite being a rock man at heart, Iron Maiden are one band that I have never really sat down and indulged in fully, despite having heard many of their more famous songs (Run To The Hills, The Number of the Beast, etc) and having seen them live at the Reading Festival in 2005. Being such a big fan of Metallica, a band bred on the new wave of British heavy metal (of which Maiden were the forerunners), it seemed a shame that I'd never sat down and, you know, listened to a full album.
Buying The Final Frontier was something of a whim in that regard. When a band has been going for as long as Maiden have, there runs the risk that by this, their 15th studio album, their musicianship, their well of creativity if you will, would have run dry. There is a difference between consistency and repetition, the latter of which bands like Megadeth have unfortunately fallen into as of late.
I'm happy to say, though, that The Final Frontier is really rather good. The four year gap between this and their last effort, 2006's A Matter of Life and Death, has shown the bands lack of want to rush out the next product, a move that has paid off with Frontier. The longest of any of their studio albums to date, Frontier's aim is that of epic British power metal and when I say metal, I don't mean the relentless barrage of loud aggressiveness with shouty vocals that has saturated the market as of late, I'm talking of genuinely well written and performed anthems that just happen to feature distorted guitars. Despite a couple of duds (…), for the most part it works very well, with The Alchemist (the shortest song at 4:29mins) and When the Wild Wind Blows (the longest at 11:00mins) being true modern masterpieces.
As a starting point for Iron Maiden, The Final Frontier is a sure thing. I'll definitely be more open to their works from now on.
4/5
No comments:
Post a Comment