REVIEW – IRON MAIDEN – THE FINAL FRONTIER
IRON MAIDEN – THE FINAL FRONTIER
(8/10)
METAL LEGENDS PROVE THAT FACED WITH THE CHALLENGE OF PROGRESS, THEIR COLOURS DON’T RUN
IN THE decade since the return of Bruce Dickinson to the Iron Maiden fold they’ve produced arguably the finest trio of albums from any band in that period. From the soaring, quasi-futuristic Brave New World to Dance of Death’s sumptuous, fantasy-inspired sprawl right through the throbbing portent of A Matter of Life and Death the reignited genius has never been in doubt. The bad news is that The Final Frontier doesn’t quite measure up to those modern classics, but where they harked back to the glories of yore, TFF adopts a more ambitiously progressive approach.
Although initial release El Dorado pointed towards a solid albeit more conventional return and the eponymous first single came across as a somewhat aimless exercise in progging-up, the rest of the album covers largely uncharted territory. Dropping the pre-released tracks first, proceedings get underway proper with Mother of Mercy; a brilliantly unintuitive marriage of soaring vocal lines and glass-sharp riffage. By comparison Coming Home seems quite mawkish. An unashamed love song from Dickinson to his pilot’s license there are some clever double entendres with the loose sci-fi theme but it’s too slow to really take flight and it’ll never trouble Saxon’s 747 (Strangers in the Night) in the aeronautic-metal-classic stakes. No such problems for The Alchemist; a zippy throwback to the band’s punkish roots, utterly packed with whipping guitar lines and featuring Dickinson on fine, lyrical form it’s the most straightforwardly accomplished song on the record. At 4:29 it’s also the shortest and marks the transition point (excluding the title-track’s elongated intro) into truly epic territory.
From Isle of Avalon to When the Wild Wind Blows, the final five tracks average out at around nine-minutes apiece. From men who effectively made their name as a singles band, this should really seem quite rich but that it doesn’t is credit to the transition from the occasional proggish gallop of the 80s (Powerslave, Phantom of the Opera) to the towering sweep of their more modern work. Building on the expansive structures explored in previous releases (The Talisman even cuts a little too close to AMOLAD’s The Legacy with its lilting acoustic intro) they’ve fully embraced the broad swathes of time that allow the triple-guitar setup to work their magic. This ambitious embrace, however, is also where the album falls down. As with the final three tracks on Dance of Death these five lack real characteristic individuality and listening to the album in one sitting it becomes difficult to separate one from the other. It seems as if the songs lack the individual identity and motifs that have always marked the maiden songwriting but on closer listening it becomes apparent that the really juicy bits have just been padded out with less distinctive guitar parts. From a prog perspective this would be absolutely fine, but it’s difficult to see these connecting with live audiences with the immediacy to which maiden must be accustomed. That the strength of the motifs and lyrical themes aren’t as potent as in the past must also shoulder some of the burden but it’s a pity that where there are a wealth of really iconic parts here they’ve lapsed the quality control to let the rest be padded out with mere interesting ideas. In fairness Wild Wind… does see the band produce one of their most compellingly bleak ballads but it would’ve been better placed a couple of tracks before the end to break up the more lyrically abstruse earlier tracks.
Still, this is Iron Fucking Maiden and a recording of them arsing around in the rehearsal room would still make absolutely essential listening. As it stands, TFF will most likely become a cult fan favourite; the musicality here features elements from all past three records but rightly sits somewhere between Brave New World and Somewhere in Time in terms of a base catalogue thematic. Naysayers will undoubtedly claim they’d have been better sticking to what they know best but it’d be far more appropriate to stand up and applaud these true metal figureheads taking the (flight) controls and leading from the front.
Nicko McBrain has recently put paid to the speculation that this 15th Iron Maiden record would be their last and while that’s a good thing in that this is a band with the resurgent quality to deserve to go out on an all-time high, there’s patent promise here that they’ll be able to do so without simply rewriting the classics of metal’s past.
A great record, but more a new beginning than the expected journey’s end.
Sam Law
