One of my favourite Maiden album covers, but this might be my least favourite Maiden album.
For me this one exemplifies their annoying trend post-2000 to try and make every song an epic, usually by making them far longer than they need to be. Back in the day they'd do maybe one or two really long epics per album and then surround them with shorter, more straightforward stuff, and as a result the epics stood out. Now I find I'm usually bored long before the song's over, track after track, which is all the more annoying because if some of them were cut down to a more reasonable length I'd probably quite like them.
And good God, do they have to follow the exact same structure of
slow intro ->
heavy main bit ->
overly waffley break ->
back to the heavy bit ->
reprise of the intro on practically every track? That shit gets on my tits, especially the needless repetition of the intro at the end. When was the last time Maiden did anything even half as interesting as "22 Acacia Avenue"? Or pretty much anything on
Seventh Son? Or even "Sign of the Cross"?
I keep digging this one out every now and then in the hopes it'll grow on me, but it just ends up reminding me of how much less I like the band since Bruce left the first time around.
