OMG! Iron Maiden wails soooo hard!
How can a band play for over 20 years and yet remain totally uninfluenced by what is going on in the rest of the music industry? Iron Maiden (or as the insiders call them, Maiden) not only disassociates themselves from the mainstream, but also refuses to follow the standards of modern heavy metal. It is almost as if the band is stuck in an alternate universe where life is music and music is metal.
"Dance of Death" opens with the deathly original "1, 2, 3 and 4" count off -- and from there ensues pure, postmortem mayhem. As the first single, "Wildest Dreams" establishes a tone Iron Maiden fans will instantly recognize. There's a verse, a chorus, but no guitar solo. SIKE! Of course there's a solo and it will rock your living (or dead) socks off. Careening through a harmonic minor scale, the solo changes key more times than the employee of the week at Keys 'R' Us. After the brief, four-minute "Wildest Dreams," the album swells and expands with songs that are not inhibited by the verse-chorus-verse format, many of which start and end with solos.
With song lengths surpassing the eight-minute mark, the album has plenty of room to delve into extended breakdowns where singer Bruce Dickinson lyrically explores the inner reaches of his dark, morbid soul. In the fourth song, "Montsegur," Dickinson exclaims, "I stand alone in this desolate place/ In death they are truly alive/ Massacred innocence, evil took place/ The angels were burning inside." Dickinson's obsession with darkness and under-worldly imagery is still as bleak and blasphemous as it was when Maiden released their self-titled debut in 1980.
Unlike Poison and Guns 'n Roses, who both tried to recreate themselves for modern listeners, Iron Maiden realizes that they are not a butt-rock band like Creed or Nickleback and don't ever want to become one. Where Poison and G 'n R have done nothing but disgrace themselves to their fans of yesteryear, Iron Maiden has refused to evolve with the times.
Instead, Iron Maiden has evolved in a different way. They have maintained their signature sound but now look deeper into the subject that truly interests them: Death. Their new songs may sound inherently similar to their older albums, but that is because they have developed a highly original writing style.
The British quintet has gone through several line-up changes over the course of their career, including several lead singer swaps that have always led back to Dickinson. The guitarists have done a fair amount of coming and going also, with Adrian Smith and Tony Parsons both exiting the band to pursue other groups but returning to Maiden after their brief solo endeavors.
While never receiving much air-play in the States, Iron Maiden has a loyal underground following in the U.S. which still exists today (the proof is their mostly sold out U.S. tour this past summer with Motorhead and DIO).
The self-proclaimed "best live band ever," Iron Maiden is still one of the biggest metal acts back across the seas, doing extensive and successful touring even in the anti-metal 1990s.
While all of the songs on "Dance of Death" contain interesting elements, "Paschendale" and "Face in the Sand" are the standout tracks. The breakdown in "Paschendale" is the most epic moment on the disc, culminating a three-part guitar harmony with a machine gun drum part backed by a monstrous string arrangement. "Face in the Sand" is an extended opus in which drummer Nicko McBrain plugs away on his double bass drums for all but about 30 seconds of the six and a half minute track. The song sounds like an evil march into the underworld and the blazing guitars and accompanying strings create the perfect background for Dickinson's bleak imagery about an apocalyptic future. Overall, "Dance of Death" is not only a great Iron Maiden album, but it is also proof that Iron Maiden had the longevity that rivals Judas Priest and Accept lost over 10 years ago.
Iron Maiden fans may not be dead (although they are getting older now), but Maiden's "Dance of Death" is sure to breathe a bit of life into a music industry saturated by bands who are too adaptive to the mainstream.
Grade: 4 stars
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