h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I got one or two friends who bought the album with me on the day it came out, and didn't quite like the songs straight away. Yesterday we saw Iron Maiden at Earl's Court, and any doubts we had on these songs were blown away.
They opened up with The Wicker Man, my favourite song on the album. I bought it on both CDs (transparent and normal) and LP. They just dashed on and belted out as opening chords as they came on. The audience were slow to react to the supporting bands, Entombed and Slayer, but straight away Maiden had them singing along.

They did five other songs from the new album, as well as some older stuff - including a fabulous rendition of Sign Of The Cross, which I was not expecting!
My only complaint was that now Maiden are churning out long songs, they are getting less songs into their shows. How many songs did they do yesterday? A dozen? Fifteen peehaps? Didn't feel enough for a two hour set. But then, it's good to see their simply not rehashing the same set at every show. There were some of my favourites that didn't get played, but it didn't stop me walking away absolutely gobsmacked.

So, the new album is a cracker, but don't knock Blaze. The X Factor is one of their bestest albums.

I have a confession to make. After the disastrous Fear of the Dark album, and Bruce Dickinson's departure from the band, I gave up on Iron Maiden and turned to other music, though I still enjoyed listening to my old Maiden CDs from time to time. I was aware that new albums were coming out, but I was not tempted to buy them. (For one thing, the cover designs completely sucked.) It seemed that the Iron Maiden that I knew and loved was no more.

And then Brave New World came out. By this time I was aware that Bruce and Adrian Smith were back with the band, and I liked the look of the CD (okay so I shouldn't judge by appearances, but I got a 'returning to old form' vibe from it). So I bought it. And it was excellent! Blood Brothers straight away grabbed my attention, and now it's one of my favourite Maiden songs. The Thin Line... is also growing in my estimation. (The Mercenary, though, it has to be said, is the one bad track on the album, surely?)

My interest in Iron Maiden was instantly revived. I wrote my own guide entry about them (you can check it out if you like, it's called "The Albums of Iron Maiden"). Obviously, though, I was unable to say anything about the Blaze Bayley albums. So I bought them. Having listened through both of them once, my thoughts were: Blaze is no Bruce, and the albums are okay but nothing special. HOWEVER, last night I listened to The X Factor for the second time, and I found myself thinking: Ah yes, I recognise this song ... ooh, this isn't half bad ... wow, I must go and get my wife so she can listen to this ... and so on. Okay so Blaze is not quite as good as Bruce, but he's definitely got something, and his style really suits some of those tracks. So now I'm sitting here at work, longing to go home and listen to The X Factor again. I figure I could get to like it as much as Brave New World.

And I feel guilty as hell now, of course. I should have stuck with Maiden - they obviously had a lot more to offer, and I abandoned them just on the strength of one lousy album (although to be honest they had been on a decline ever since the World Slavery tour). But now I guess they're back on form, and have been for a while, though I didn't realise it. I'll review The X Factor in my guide entry in a few days once I've got to know the album better, and in the meantime I'll also be getting to know Virtual XI, which after only one playing I can't say much about.

Fear Of The Dark disastourous???!!!! That album is like, my joint second favourite (with The Number Of The Beast)! Every song on there is a killer, and how many have gone down in history as Favourites? Well, I don't own the album so I can't remember, but boy, when I borrowed that I was like, freaked out. It is a masterpeice.

Now, Blaze Bayley...

It seems like a great coincidence or somesuch, that while Steve Harris was going through such tribulations that inspired the songs on The X Factor, he had Blaze as his band's vocalist. Bruce sings these songs fine live, in fact the 6-peice does blinding performances, but Blaze just seems so suited.
Then, there's the fact that he's got a fantastic voice regardless. That is undisputed. He was right for Maiden. I don't feel I need say anything more.

I find that problems fans have is that they're too narrow-minded to accept this. You never hear them prasing Blaze's vocal talents, do you? I think that the shock of having two albums that weren't conventional Maiden sound was too much for them, and that saddens me. Can you deny that the music on these albums is sheer genius? Particularly The X Factor...an underrated masterpeice.

Lastly, I wanna say that
1. I am DEFINATLY buying Blaze Bayley's 'solo' album, as soon as I can find it *^_^*
2. The artwork on The X Factor is sheer class, but Virtual XI is a bight bright and...red...for my liking *^_^*

Finally, The Mercenary is the weakest BNW song, but still fine to liosten to. Can't believe Metal Hammer said The Wicker Man was a weak one too...despite giving it tons of praise!

Hmm, I really don't know what you see in Fear of the Dark. What was good about it? Afraid to Shoot Strangers was okay, but the instrumental break didn't seem to fit with the rest of the song, and was rather obnoxious to boot (somewhat like the one in No Prayer for the Dying in that regard). And what the heck is with the line "Thy Shall Be Done"??? Does Steve Harris not understand the meaning of the word 'will' in the Lord's Prayer or something? Anyway so I have some gripes with that song. And that was the best song on the album! Fear of the Dark itself was a tired epic-by-numbers that in no way lived up to epics of the past like Seventh Son, Phantom, To Tame a Land or even Mother Russia or Alexander the Great. And FOTD was the second best song on the album. Be Quick Or Be Dead was a blatant smash-and-grab hit single attempt, and From Here To Eternity was absolutely dire. Of the others, only Fear Is The Key and Wasting Love stand out, though both kind of annoy me. Bruce's vocals are actually pretty annoying throughout the album - he's way off form. He was in No Prayer, too, but at least some of the songs on that album were good (Run Silent Run Deep, Bring Your Daughter... and Mother Russia). The great thing about Brave New World is that Bruce's voice is back on form, which is wonderful to hear. He hasn't sounded this good since Seventh Son.

I just listened to The X Factor again and I have to agree with you - it's excellent. I'm really getting to like Bayley's vocals, and the songs are among Maiden's most inventive. But I hate the artwork. It's just plain disgusting, and it's not Maiden. Derek Riggs IS the art of Maiden, and the cover of Brave New World is great - I'm very glad to see Riggs back at the easel.

I'm not a big fan of Number of the Beast. Okay, so it had four great songs. But it also had one mediocre one (Run to the Hills) and three really awful ones (Invaders, Gangland, The Prisoner) which I rank among Maiden's all-time worst, along with half the songs on NPFTD and FOTD. You can check out my own Maiden entry for my views on ALL of their albums, if you wish, though you may well object strenuously to some of my opinions.

But opinions differ, and that's a fact of life. Different people like Maiden for different reasons, and I find it fascinating. On a recent thread at Maiden's official website, people were discussing their favourite songs on BNW. I saw ALL of the tracks mentioned as people's favourites, with one exception: *nobody* thought The Mercenary was the best track. Guess that means it must be the worst, huh?
I enjoy The Wicker Man, but I guess it is a little weak. The chorus and the ending rescue it from mediocrity, IMHO. Blood Brothers and The Thin Line are brilliant. While listening to those I'm thinking: how many instruments?? There's a bit in the middle of The Thin Line where I'm sure they're cheating - there just aren't that many guitars in the band! We'll see how they play it live, if they do.

Anyway, I'll have another listen to Fear of the Dark, just for you, and I'll see if it changes my mind about the album.

I promised myself I wasn't going to say this, but what the hell:
Up the Irons!

UP THE IRONS!!! DEATH TO FALSE METAL!!!

Opinions vary, and I believe ours widely contrast. I will refrain from smacking you upside down though: to diss Fear Of The Dark is Unforgiveable.

Afraid To Shoot Strangers: Who gives a damn about the lord's prayer anyway? Never mattered to anyone...anyway, they usually sing it with "will" live anyway.
I'm trying to think of ways to word this in other ways from "the music is class". That's all I can say. The intro sounds good, then it leaps into a die-hard killer frenzy. Those soos just knock all others senseless.
Fear Of The Dark is one of the better epics, and one of the more memorable, a blinder. Great to sing along to, great to listen to, great to wave your head around and get totally smashed to! Definatly better than Mother Russia (btw - to me Alexander The Great sounds like a cross between Rime Of The Ancient Mariner and Heaven Can Wait - which is prolly why it's such a class song).
I'd always been under the impression that Maiden never went for smash-and-grab singles, but they would have cottoned on to Be Quick Or Be Dead's potential from the git-go. It must be said, Maiden always release two singles from an album and enter them into the charts, so they're always able to use their skilled musicianship to get hits all the time.
From Here To Eternity wasn't dire, but probably the weakest track on the album. Probably the closest we'll get to agreeing *^_^*

I see an Iron Maiden album structured as followed - you have the two singles, which are class. A third song (maybe more) which wasn't a single but is so damn good it should have been, then you have The Other Songs. These Other Songs are either just good, and thus a bit forgettable, or they are Really Damn Good and sadly underrated .
Fear Of The Dark has the two singles, three other Class Songs, and the rest are Underrated. I'd thought that Chains Of Misery would make a great live song.
The Number Of The Beast is also an album like this.. Every song is a killer, even Gangland. Though, they would have done better to have put Total Eclipse on the album and have Gangland as a Bside, like they wanted to. But then again, I have the enhanced CD which has all these songs on it anyway
Also, I'd love to hear Maiden play some of the Underrated songs from the Killers album from the next show. Sadly, it won't happen

Derek Riggs is indeed THE art of Maiden (is it just me or does he have a bit of trouble drawing clouds?), but The X Factor is possibly Maiden's best artwork ever. Me and a friend pondered over the meanings of the pictures before we found out what they were actually about.
As stand-alone paintings, these reflect the mood of the album totally. They're a bit grim, maybe, but does that matter? Makes 'em all the more interesting.
Then me and my friend started to find meanings to them. We've seen Eddie as the hero of Maiden, a bit of a bad guy but usually fighting for what's right (as we see on the covers of Sanctuary, The Trooper and Aces High). But because he's the bad dude, when he eventually dies he has to be sent to this bad place, lobotomised and electrocuted. The electrocution picture is my image of hell. Left alone on the chair in the middle of nowhere, screaming in pain on your own forever. That's what Eddie has to do for his Sins.
Alternatively, remember on Peice Of Mind, where Eddie was in the loony bin after having his brain taken out? The cover of The X Factor vould show this oporation actually happening.
However, I found out that it's meant to be the birth of Eddie, which destroyed all our imagery a bit. Still, we can dream, eh?

Fin 4 now...

You miss my point about the Lord's Prayer. Whether or not you give a damn about it, Steve Harris quoted from it, and it's obvious he misunderstood its meaning when he did so. I call that very sloppy, and pretty stupid too. Aside from that though, I guess we'll have to agree to differ about FOTD.

You and I obviously get different things from Iron Maiden. I tend to dislike their 'hit single' songs - I much prefer the epics. My favourite album is Powerslave ... and there you have the 'singles' Aces High and 2 Minutes to Midnight, which I do like, but the highlights of the album are Powerslave and Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The epic format gives them a chance to explore multiple themes and do interesting compositional stuff (see the instrumental break in Powerslave for a great example of this), and this is where you get to see them at their best. My favourite Maiden songs: Phantom of the Opera, Powerslave, Hallowed Be Thy Name, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, To Tame a Land, Mother Russia, Revelations, Infinite Dreams, and now Blood Brothers. Sometimes the epic format doesn't work quite so well, for instance in Alexander the Great which, while it's pretty good, isn't up to the standard of other epics. And Fear of the Dark (the song) is just uninspired. There's no originality or complexity in it at all. To be frank, I find it dull.

Of course, it's not just the lengthy epics that I like. Some of the shorter songs are memorable for other reasons. Songs like Children of the Damned, Remember Tomorrow, The Trooper and 22 Acacia Avenue are all classics in their own right. But they are all original and different in some way. I tend to dislike anything that I see as unoriginal, derivative, commercial, or uninteresting in a musical sense. And I find that is the case with most of the FOTD album, five of the songs on the NPFTD album and much of SSOASS. SIT wasn't bad musically, but the sound was unvarying throughout the album and that made it annoying to listen to. BNW and TXF are creatively far more original and interesting than any of those other four.

I've never really looked for a meaning or a story in the pictures of Eddie. Either I like the pictures or I don't. And I love Derek Riggs' pictures, but I hate those on TXF. I think it's partly because they're photographs rather than paintings. Anyway, I like Iron Maiden *despite* their morbid imagery, not because of it. I like the music. A lot of it anyway.

Incidentally, you mentioned something about 'trials and tribulations' that Steve Harris was going through when he was writing the songs for TXF - what exactly were these trials and tribulations...?

Ah, well that explains stuff then...Maiden have a thing for epics, yes. It's the way the music is riff-based. You notice that in many songs they repeat a riff until saturation point - if they played it one more time you'd get sick of it, but they always do it the maximum amount of times, then replace it with another. From this, you can write as many epics as you have different riffs. Brilliant. And there's always one per album, eh?

>SIT wasn't bad musically, but the sound was unvarying throughout the >album and that made it annoying to listen to.

Well, the latest Maiden album I've listened to was Somewhere In Time, and I didn't find this problem. I found that generally, in a sea of brilliant Maiden songs, you'll much prefer to listen to the brilliant ones then the just plain good ones. When you've heard all but one of Maiden's albums, that makes a lot of brilliant songs that take priority. Hence, the songs that aren't Hits on SIT don't get my seal of approval right now

Morbid imagry...sometimes (actually a lot of that time) I listen to Maiden and think, "is it me, or did they go all soft after The Number Of The Beast?" You listen to the albums after that, and you can't deny they aren't quite as hard as the first three. Something else I like about The X Factor cover is that it's kinda showing that Maiden ain't gone all faggoty. But, hey, now, if I rever think that Maiden have gone soft, I think of their show in Earl's Court a few weeks back. Remember, Maiden are a live band, and that's where they really excel. On the stage.
Have you seen Maiden live, mate?

Steve's T&T: round about the time he wrote The X Foctor's songs, Steve was getting divorced. Add that to the kids he had to bring up, and the unkind music critics, and you havew a generally not-nice situation...

I've got the Live After Death video and it's brilliant. But I discovered Maiden late - in 1991 actually - and the first album to come out after that was Fear of the Dark in '93, which I hated. So I wasn't exactly inclined to go and see them then. I'm thinking of going to see them with my wife when they come to Manchester later in the year.

Thanks for the info about Steve's T&Ts. I'm afraid I know nothing about the band members' personal lives. Oh, except that I believe Bruce Dickinson went to the same university as me - Queen Mary & Westfield College (part of London Uni). Except that it was probably just Queen Mary College when he went there. I think he got a degree in History.

Actually repeated riffs (and repeated-line choruses) really turn me off. The thing I like about Maiden's best songs is that there's plenty of variety in them and exploration of different themes.

By the way, I'm going through the new albums and I'm thinking to myself: whatever happened to Martin Birch? Did they sack him after FOTD, and if so why?

Bruce got a history degree, yeah. He also fences for England, flies a plane, owns a record label and has his own solo career. He once pissed in his headmaster's food, and shattered a glass while singing.
The greatest source for Maiden trivia has to be the biography. One particularly memorable bit is Dennis Stratton's reaction to being fired from Maiden. Rather oddly, the bio makes no mention of the band's appearence on Tiswas, nor their meeting with Margeret Thatcher...

As for Martin Birch, the guy had been producing albums since the mid-sixties. Fear Of The Dark was something like his last album, and after that he retired. Bugger must be living in luxury right now...

I knew he fenced, but I didn't know the rest. What *was* Dennis Stratton's reaction to being fired...? And what happened when the band met Mrs T?

Maybe Martin Birch was so embarrassed about FOTD that he 'retired' and went into hiding....

RESPECT to FOTD, brother!

Well, poor Dennis, upon hearing he was fired, he went home. Poured a bath, turned on stereo playing his favourite album, put on headphones, turned on shower, got in bath fully clothed, and cried his eyes out. Poor bloke. Despite what Steve and all said, I reckon it wasn't his fault.

As for The Iron Maiden herself, I'm trying to find out what happened!

Awww, that's so sad!! Poor chap...
Any idea what happened to him after that? Did he find another band...?

Yeah, he formed Lionheart (I think that's the name), who went on to have some success, i think, so it wasn't all downhill.
Damn, I need something more concrete *^_^*

Ah that's good