I saw them on that Maiden England run also and they did sound amazing. I saw them last year with Ghost and I have to admit they didn't sound as good. Ghost on the other hand sounded phenomenal so i'm wondering if it was just a soundboard issue. At any rate it was still good to see them live.
I'm behind, sorry! A few comments. Moonchild: The synth intro is reminiscent of Baba O’Riley or Synchronicity I. Infinite Dreams: Love the way the song eschews traditional verse/chorus/verse and just flows organically Can I Play With Madness, The Evil That Men Do are both great, I have nothing to add. Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son: Another great song with a great intro. I write lousy songs all the time, I can never write a good intro, I wish I could, I can never figure that out.
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son: For a long time I ignored this song, was never that taken with it back in the days of the cassette. I'd even suggest back then it was my least favourite (or maybe least played song is more accurate,) on the album. However, i did end up seeing sense. It is epic, it is quality, its the sort of song we really missed on the 2 following albums, (we'll get to those soon enough,) every Maiden album should have one, some have more than one but for "Seventh" this is the one. Love it now but its taken some time to get there. When we started on this album a few days back I was even then ready to suggest the title track was the weakest, however i have finally seen sense and realise Madness is the one weak track on this record. This track will get more attention from me in future.
The 2012 show was the first time I noticed Steve having less energy than normal. He seemed to be more tired and ran around less. The sound was fantastic, though.
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son – Classic riff, reminiscent of Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Plodding beat with urgent, foreboding singing. Bruce shines with some long powerful resonating vocals. Love the use of keyboards to add texture. Chorus is simple and repetitive but the Air Raid Siren kills it here. Love how Bruce continues the “oooooooooo” note forever as the tempo changes. Possibly the best section follows. Love the distant and creepy vocals. Great bass line and the keyboards and chanting really take it to the next level. Some cool distant sounding but heavy power chords slowly build the song back up to its previous fury. The multi-sectional solo is well thought out and adds greatly to the song. Just like Rime of the Ancient Marinier, this song goes by in a blink of an eye, despite its nearly 10 minutes. A worthy epic centerpiece to the album.
Im busy at the moment, but for sure Im gonna add my review of the song ”Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son” little later today.
Can I Play With Madness My second least favorite song on the album, but it works when it is apart of the whole album. I never listen to it when I am listening to a compilation, though. The Evil That Men Do Great song. I always thought it was at least partially about suicide, with the "living on a razor's edge, balancing on a ledge line". Seventh Son of a Seventh Son Always fighting with Infinite Dreams for my favorite song on the album. I have always been intrigued by the title for some reason. I also recently found out that former Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson is a Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, which is pretty cool. I bet that power helped him win the Super Bowl. I was very excited that a live version of Seventh Son was included on BBC Archives, and it didn't disappoint.
Thanks to this thread I am remastering Maiden England, now do I add the Donnington tracks not played at Birmingham into the concert running order or not ??
The Prophecy: We now arrive at The Prophecy, featuring Dave's only writing credit on this album, as he is credited alongside Steve. This continues the Seventh Son story in which the boy warns his Village of impending doom, which they ignore and suffer for as a result. The song starts with a synth/ guitar buildup, that does a solid job building up the atmosphere and vibe, and Dave and Adrian get some strong harmonies in, before the band charges in at :45, and we settle into a mid tempo groove over which Bruce sings the lyrics, and he does an awesome job conveying the fury and the panic of the song, as do the band. Dave and Adrian, I will say this again, do some great harmonies, and Dave gets in an awesome solo at 2:22, reminding me of why he's my favorite Maiden guitarist. I also adore the little acoustic section at the end, it's so cool and definitely something different for Maiden, and a good different, that's important to note. Overall, while not as strong as the title track or Moonchild or Infinite Dreams, it's a very strong addition nonetheless and adding to an already very strong album.
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son This is a great use of synths. As others noted, it has a choir-like effect. After a brief intro, we get into Maiden's "march" mode. Bruce's vocals sound angry - this is a man who never wanted to be the "chosen one", but that seems to be his fate. Nicko is great here, driving the song forward. Arry sits in the pocket mostly, letting the other guys do their thing. The dueling guitar solos in the last act speak for themselves. I love the bridge with Bruce's spoken word and the quiet bass. Lyrically, we move from our album's narrator to someone who's been told he's destined to be the savior to humanity. At the end of Side A our narrator has decided that his wrongdoings will follow him forever. Side B proposes that there is someone - or something - that can save us from our mistakes.
The Prophecy I always enjoy going through these Murray songs to see where he was at this point in time. He usually writes one song per album and you can really tell that a guitarist wrote this song. It has a very strong medieval/renaissance quality to it, not just in the outro but in the other sections too. So much of the song has this flowing 6/8 vibe and that gives it a kind of bouncy quality. Steve wrote a good vocal melody here and it really gives Bruce a chance to sing so well with lots of space. As for his bass playing, I love Steve's bass lines in the intro (even though it's pretty quiet) and also in the middle harmony section. The whole middle section is once again one of the highlights to the song and I love all the changes it goes through. My absolute favorite part of the song is the ending part, both in the extremely cool harmony part right after the vocal ends and how that leads into the "ren-faire" outro. Dave adding such a pronounced classical influence gave Maiden another layer to their music. I wish they used that more. The outro also leads us perfectly into the next song, but we'll save that for tomorrow. Great song.
I am interested to hear the opinions of everyone on The Prophecy. The first 45 seconds of this track is my favorite of the entire album. Great guitars working together! A really nice song. Fresh. It's really fun taking it slow going track by track. I never paid much attention to this album upon release but I am enjoying it more and more now. I can see why everyone likes it so much. I go through each song and find parts that I absolutely love. And yeah, a few tracks are exceptional start to finish for me. The Prophecy is definitely one of my favorites. Someone mentioned earlier that the production is more complete for this album than the previous and I totally agree. I said it before and one more time here: Would've been so interesting if they would've continued in this sound/songwriting direction on the follow-up album. I had a long flight earlier this week for work and I listened to Maiden England start/finish and it is my favorite live album by IM. They were firing on all cylinders for that one. Last btw, have picked up most of the Castles now thanks to eBay. Happy with these...
The Prophecy My favourite Iron Maiden song. Always included in my Maiden playlists/compilation tapes/cd's throughout the past 30 years. Starts lovely then the epic bass and guitar from 0:45. Love the time change between the guitar solo's at 2:23. Always sing along to the chorus, always mime to Nicko's drums/cymbals hit at 3:27. "And now its too laaaaaate........" from 3:39 onwards. I LOVE the acoustic ending, its gorgeous. Not Maiden-like at all. My favourite Maiden album, my favourite Maiden song. Is it their strongest song? Noooooooooo way, I'd never say that but it's my favourite. Just takes me back to being 16 years old and listening to that original cassette version. Might even make it into my 8 Desert Island discs if I ever get asked on there it certainly has everything I like about Maiden in one 5 minute song.
"Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son", stellar epic and this got nice groove. All the way from the start the song grabs you, keeps you interested and there's certain aura, atmosphere, mystic and dark as Bruce tells the story. Bruce's got that perfect, darkish and mystical voice, that definitely is what the song needs. As @Musicman1998 said in his introduction/review of the song, Nicko's on board leading this song with steady beat. One of his finest performances that's for sure. I like the wealth amount of synths used in this song, it's sort of choir-effect and really working as setting sense of what the story is about. This is some deep stuff really. The whole song keeps up that similar epic, dark feeling that's present in the intro and it does not fade away at all. The middle-part is great, the spoken parts from Bruce and then he stops the talking and the instrumental-section begins. Anything after those lines "So It Shall Be Written, So It Shall Be Done" is outstanding with all the little changes along the way and it's one of the best sections ever in the catalogue. As @Cheevyjames commented in seeing Maiden live in 2012, I saw Maiden in Helsinki 20th of july 2013, it was indeed great, memorable show. I always sing along to the songs in the concert, it always gets to me so deep and I just always empathize to Maiden so strongly. The spoken-part in this song was magnificent when I heard it live, it was very touching moment and I got little tears running as I spoke the words along with Bruce. It was great that Bruce sort of lit the torches on the stage... Still getting goosebumps of the whole middle-section thing when thinking about it, as it happened there in Helsinki. So this song gets the deserved ranks from me: 5/5
The Prophecy My least favourite track on the album. I just find the verses clumsy...they don't really fit or gel with the music. This for me starts to become a common trait as albums pass. The ending is nice ...but the idea is lifted straight from Black Sabbath's Heaven And Hell. 3/5
"The Prophecy", I think for some reason this has always felt a little lesser song. Sort of faceless and not enough caricature. I like it, but the intro and outro are really the best parts of the song. The song has important purpose in the story, so of course it's essential to the album. Fairly good and melodic song from Dave, nothing too bad to worry about, but it just don't get good enough to stand as anything special on the album. There's some medieval and martial feeling there whole the time. Lack of good chorus bothers here. Underrated song for sure, but I still wouldn't quite make it to the same A-list as "Moonchild", "Infinite Dreams", "The Evil That Men Do" or "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son". Maybe it should have been placed differently on the album or something. This album has been one of the most listened albums from Maiden and unfornately this song doesn't quite carry on the flow of the music, eventhough it adds to the story. The ending of the song, the fadeout is great transition to the next track. I have to take 1 point of from this unfornately, so this gets 4/5 which is still pretty good score (compared to how this has usually been treated).
I admit it, that sometimes I feel a bit guilty or even have little bad feeling if Im trying to critize any of my absolute favorite bands/artists output. But what can you do, I really like all the Maiden-stuff but just sometimes have to comment a bit negatively even if you don't wanna be too critical, analytic and picky. I hope you get what Im trying to say here..
THE PROPHECY Cool mid-tempo song. Actually reminds me slightly of "Quest For Fire" in its rhythm, but the lyrics here are better. This song is different from some of the others lyrically because it actually advances the "plot" of the concept. Rather than just being a song "about" being clairvoyant, it's a song about what happens "because" you are clairvoyant, if that makes any sense. I like the overlapping vocals in the prechoruses. Reminds me of what Metalllica was doing around this time on And Justice For All (like on "Harvester of Sorrow," the slightly overlapped "call and responses" on the chorus. BTW Sometimes I think Justice is my favorite Metallica album). But my favorite part is the acoustic outro. I remember it was once transcribed in one of the guitar magazines, and I learned to play it, but I'd have to break out the tab to try to play it again. Good catch on it resembling the outro to "Heaven and Hell."
That's how I am with my favorite band, Deep Purple. "One More Rainy Day," "Hard Lovin' Woman," "You Can't Do It Right (With The One You Love)," and "Too Much Is Not Enough" are four of their worst songs, off the top of my head. Horrible. But their worst overall album for me is Rapture of the Deep.
Definitely don't like that one (and I like some Morse era records), but I'd say the one with Joe Lynn is worse But hey, great to know another person to invite when I finally do DP
Deep Purple song-by-song would be epic. So would a Sabbath song-by-song (although it would be hard to top the Sabbath album-by-album thread).
The closing guitar parts in The Prophecy are very distinct compared to anything they’ve put out up to that point. I bet the music in this song had some influence on Mikael Akerfeldt because hear similarities in early Opeth songs - actually I hear this throughout their catalog. Coming back to this album after so many years past the release - and after years spent listening to Opeth, I initially thought ‘damn, that sounds like Opeth’ when listening to this song!
The Prophecy Good little tune from Davey and Steve. I have always liked this one even though I can acknowledge that its not an album highlight. The melodies are strong and Bruce sings with conviction. Some nice bass work from Steve. Reminds me of Quest For Fire but for me that's a good thing as I like that one as well. 4/5