Iron Maiden new album, "Senjutsu" - release date September 3, 2021*

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Jeff Kent, Jun 29, 2021.

  1. Gavaxeman

    Gavaxeman Take me back to dear old Blighty...

    Location:
    West Midlands U.K.
    Paschendale on Dance of Death is awesome! Title track is great too ..
     
  2. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Gently weeping guitarist.

    Location:
    Odense Denmark.
    It is good you enjoy them. I don’t. At the time i was astounded that they could make such a bad album (in my oppinion!) after making what i think is the only post 7th son album on par with their eighties output. On Brave New World they had something to prove. And they did really prove it. BNW is a fantastic album. But (again to me) everything that came after was hit and miss. I liked huge chunks of AMOLAD (everything but the two first tracks actually). And enjoyed the tour where they played all of it. What a statement to make. Respect. TFF left me cold (i sort of did like Mother Of Mercy). A whole album where every song lost my interest after two minutes. I was left thinking why they made an album with no choruses. Or put another way, the choruses did not make their presence known. The album was just like one long not very good sausage of sound. And that intro track where they didn’t even bother to replace the drum machine with real drums. That just seemed incredibly lazy to me. No harmony vocals in the choruses, no songs that were earworms.
    Book Of Souls. Well ok, fine album for a band late in their carreer. But some of the epic tracks just seemed to have the epicness to their detriment. Particularly The Red And The Black and Empire Of The Clouds. And that production where it sounds like everything has a pillow over it….. Fortunately i was able to rectify that myself with some tweaking.

    But my real beef with the albums after BNW is that just they dashed into the studio, recorded them pretty much live and that was that. Only small mistakes corrected. And the quality suffers. I would like to see them put as much effort into recording, as they used to do. Spend three months in the studio instead of three weeks. When the drums have been tracked, re-record the guitars so they are tight (remember the guitars on Powerslave anyone?), instead of the “sloppy live guitars will do” approach. Give Bruce all the time he needs. Let him add harmony vocals so the choruses leap out. Spend time getting good melodic lead guitars. Spend time getting three guitar sounds where the sounds compliments the other guitars (as opposed to the mud of sound they have produced on the last couple of albums). Make the basslines as detailed as they once were. Remember the time when Steve and Nicko actually cared to work out coordinated drum and bass fills? But noone really cares anymore because the important thing is getting an album out so they can tour it. The tour is where the money is. The album is just a necesary evil.

    And yes, there absolutely is fine stuff here and there on the post BNW albums. But even the fine stuff suffers from deterioated work ethics.

    With good work ethics, like working on a track untill it really is good enough, even lesser tracks are fine. But with a work ethic of “let’s dash into the studio and be done with it” the lesser tracks become bad, and what could have been latterday masterpieces, merely becomes good, but never great.
     
  3. Ghost of Ziggy

    Ghost of Ziggy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hell
    For me personally:

    Brave New World A-
    Dance Of Death B-
    AMOLAD B+
    Final Frontier C+
    Book of Souls C (way too much filler)
     
  4. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Gently weeping guitarist.

    Location:
    Odense Denmark.
    That is the interesting about music. How we all percieve it differently. I thought Book Of Souls was quite the improvement over TFF.

    But as i said. If there is half an album in there that i enjoy, then i am a happy camper.
     
  5. Gus Tomato

    Gus Tomato Stop dreamin’ and start drivin’ Stevie!

    Location:
    Cork
    Couldn’t agree more - you have a world-class studio, use it!
    Capturing the ‘live sound’ works for some bands but Iron Maiden?, I’d rather they spent time crafting the music in the studio like they did in the 80’s. (Or else they spent the same amount of time in the studio in the 80’s as they do now but the magnificent Martin Birch was the difference).
     
  6. craigobau

    craigobau Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, England
    Best tracks on Book Of Souls?

    If Eternity Should Fail
    The Red And The Black
    Book Of Souls
    Empire Of The Clouds

    For me, that’s a great 50min album.
     
  7. AngusStanley

    AngusStanley Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts
    Dump Kevin Shirley and reign in Steve Harris if you want the music not to be a borefest. Lose all the clicky clacky bass intros. Tell Nicko to keep the beat not overplay over everything and kill the groove. Have Adrian and Bruce write 80% of the songs. Don’t have any songs with three pointless guitar solos just for the hell of it. Don’t have any songs where the chorus is just the name of the song repeated over and over and over again, like 75% of their output after 1992. Steve has just been rewriting Fear of the Dark over and over again.
     
    Scott222C, Deuce66, thebisch and 7 others like this.
  8. Ghost of Ziggy

    Ghost of Ziggy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hell
    Who wants another Bruce solo album too? Been like 20 years.
     
  9. Janick adds a lot to the band in song writing terms and his live performances are always great to watch IMO.
     
  10. SammyJoe

    SammyJoe Up The Irons!

    Location:
    Finland
    He's talked about it (in interviews and in his book also when I went to his book tour show here in Finland) and has supposedly been actually working on it, but so far nothing has come out yet.
    The original version of the song "If Eternity Should Fail" from Maiden's The Book Of Souls, was meant to be the title-track of Bruce's solo-album (a whole concept album, he told in interview).

    According to Dickinson, the original plan was for his next solo record to be "a whole concept album, which was gonna be called 'If Eternity Should Fail'. And 'If Eternity Should Fail' was the title track to my new solo album," he said. "And a bit like [Dickinson's 1989 solo song] 'Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter' [laughs], it got commandeered for IRON MAIDEN. So if I did do another solo album, which I think I will, I might just stick to my original plan and have that as the title track. I mean, I did write it — it was the first track that I wrote for it. So, yeah, I'd probably still include that song. But it would be… the feel would be slightly different — not very much, though — from the MAIDEN version."

    But, yes nothing has so far being released and as we know, Bruce's very busy man nowadays and all sorts of different things seem to take his time off from having that precious little time to dedicate to his solo career.
    Anyways, Im definitely interested in anything that Bruce has done, all the solo albums are great and so looking forward to the new one (whenever it is being released) someday. Hope that the album will be out.
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2021
  11. sillycornelius

    sillycornelius Forum Resident

    Location:
    Raleigh
    He had half an album's worth of solo material several years ago, but one of the songs was "If Eternity Should Fail" which he handed over to Maiden for Book of Souls. Hopefully the rest of the material will see the light of day though. Who knows, maybe he used the past year's downtime to chip away at it. One can only hope.
     
    primoridal_ooze likes this.
  12. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Gently weeping guitarist.

    Location:
    Odense Denmark.
    Speaking of If Eternity Should Fail. Now that is a worthy late era track.
     
  13. ArpMoog

    ArpMoog Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    Not in my circles. We can't stand it.
    Its like watching a hair metal guy.
    I know its Blackmore he simulates but its not Maiden .sorry. At least not classic Dave and Adrian Maiden.
    I've literally held up one hand at shows to block him out.
     
  14. craigobau

    craigobau Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, England
    Looks like all will be revealed on 15th July;

     
  15. Catcher10

    Catcher10 I like records, and Prog...duh

    I'm all over this.........Iron Maiden is an auto buy as well automatic ticket buy for their epic shows. Up the Friggin Irons!!!!! :edthumbs:

    [​IMG]
     
  16. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada

    The writing is on the wall. IM XVII - Iron Maiden 17 (they have 16 studio albums)


    Belshazzar's feast, or the story of the writing on the wall (chapter 5 in the Book of Daniel), tells how Belshazzar holds a great feast and drinks from the vessels that had been looted in the destruction of the First Temple. A hand appears and writes on the wall. The terrified Belshazzar calls for his wise men, but they are unable to read the writing. The queen advises him to send for Daniel, renowned for his wisdom. Daniel reminds Belshazzar that his father Nebuchadnezzar, when he became arrogant, was thrown down until he learned that God has sovereignty over the kingdom of men (see Daniel 4). Belshazzar had likewise blasphemed God, and so God sent this hand. Daniel then reads the message and interprets it: God has numbered Belshazzar's days, he has been weighed and found wanting, and his kingdom will be given to the Medes and the Persians.

    That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean (Babylonian) king was killed, and Darius the Mede received the kingdom.

    — Daniel 5:30–31
     
  17. kwf

    kwf Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rock City
    Good summary about the post BNW albums. In addition to your analysis of the vocals I'd add that Bruce always sounds out of breath... They are all cut n' pasted together and it sounds that way


     
    Kim Olesen likes this.
  18. kwf

    kwf Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rock City
    There was another small clue: Working on the Wires
     
    primoridal_ooze likes this.
  19. MikeManaic61

    MikeManaic61 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Virginia
    I'm curious to see what they do next. But the albums they've been putting the past 20 years doesn't do it for me. A lot of there songs to go on too long, the arrangements or what not need tightening.
     
    primoridal_ooze likes this.
  20. Catcher10

    Catcher10 I like records, and Prog...duh

    I listen to a lot of progressive rock/prog metal......So long songs for me do me right! Iron Maiden has a bit of prog about them, always have. I wish Rime Of the Ancient Mariner was 30 min long.......!
     
  21. AngusStanley

    AngusStanley Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts
    Yeah, easily the best song they’ve done in 15 or 20 years. No surprise that Steve Harris had nothing to do with it.
     
  22. Anthrax

    Anthrax Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    Totally. When I got Book Of Souls and I listened to that song for the first time it got me so worked up for the rest of the album. Alas!

    When I learnt it was actually a solo Bruce track, it all made sense.

    Accident Of Birth and Chemical Wedding are still the best albums Iron Maiden never made. Good times.

    Wasn't Bruce reported to be recording a few years ago? Whatever happened to that?
     
    primoridal_ooze likes this.
  23. Gus Tomato

    Gus Tomato Stop dreamin’ and start drivin’ Stevie!

    Location:
    Cork
    I love the vocal effects at the end of the song “Good day, my name is Necropolis…..” IIRC? - I was hoping he’d show up on a few more tracks!!
     
  24. krisjay

    krisjay Psychedelic Wave Rider

    Location:
    Maine
    BOS took it as far as it could in that long album direction. Give me a 45 minute, Piece Of Mind, Back In The Village,, Aces High, blast of Maiden, and I'd be happy. I think they know they can't or at least shouldn't do another epic length thing.
     
  25. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product

    It's interesting to me the thoughts on Book Of Souls ... personally I love it and would include it, and A Matter Of Life And Death among their best albums.
    I do understand the concerns about production and arrangement, but the production is going to be Kevin Shirley .... and he does what he does. The arrangements certainly could be tighter in some instances, but I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bath water.
     

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