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Old 09-07-2011, 07:00 PM   #215 (permalink)
Trollheart
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Inspired by two events, a new section begins. What, another one? Yeah. Shut up.

The first impetus for this idea was thanks to Nice Guy (see his “Music Musings” here http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...c-musings.html), when he postulated that an album can sound better second or third time around. Now, this is nothing new, but it did put me in mind of the first time I heard Phil Collins' “Face value”, and I hated it. After a while I went back to it, and whereas it's not the best debut album ever, and suffers from some pretty weak songs, I was, on second listen, able to appreciate the album a lot better, and hear tracks I had largely ignored. My problem there was that I had been expecting, naively, a Genesis album, and of course that was not what I got.

The second part of the idea came when I was writing my second entry for “Taking centre stage”, which is to feature Iron Maiden. When listening to the Blaze Bayley-era albums, particularly “Virtual XI”, I tended to discount them, but when reviewing them as part of the new feature I began to realise that one of them at least was nowhere near as bad as I had originally remembered.

And so those two events give birth to “Last Chance Saloon”, in which I will be revisting albums that have not impressed me down the years, listening to them again and deciding whether or not they are as bad as I remember, or whether, with new insight and somewhat fresh ears, I can see (or, more properly, hear) something in them I did not originally.

There's no guarantee my opinion will change of course, and those albums I pick to review (or re-review) which still fail to live up to my expectations will be treated as such, and I will write about how bad they are. But those which convince me I was right to give them a last chance I will admit to being perhaps wrong, or hasty in judging them.

The first album to get into the Last Chance Saloon is as mentioned above, Iron Maiden's “Virtual XI”.

Virtual XI --- Iron Maiden --- 1998 (EMI)


The last album to feature Blaze Bayley on vocals, this album, like its predecessor, introduced something Iron Maiden had mostly shied from utilising on their albums before, keyboards. There are places where it really works, particularly on second and longest track “The angel and the gambler”. That song is driven almost entirely by keys, as played by Steve Harris, Iron Maiden's founder and bass player, and he does a great job with them, integrating them into the Iron Maiden sound and also managing to create a whole new soundscape previously impossible with just guitars.

Opener “Futureal” is standard Maiden fare, good heavy guitars but you can hear Bayley's voice stretching on the vocals, and you can't help but wonder how Bruce Dickinson would handle such a song. It's not a huge departure from the usual Maiden songs, as mentioned, and the keyboards are minimal if used at all. It's only when “The angel and the gambler” gets going that the keys really take over. Built on a blues organ style opening, with accompanying guitar attack, the track runs for almost ten minutes, a good rocker with the keyboards driving the melody. At least here Bayley sounds better, his voice seeming more comfortable in the lower registers. The song has a great hook, but to be fair it's really overlong at just short of ten minutes, with the last three minutes being nothing more than a repeating of the same line and melody, though the guitars of Janick Gers and Dave Murray do a lot to make it other than just a repetitive exercise.

There's no doubting that the keyboards really work on “Angel”, and add a whole new dimension to the song, and it's on this track that they're most prominent, whereas on “Lightning strikes twice” they're mostly in the background and the familiar guitar sound prevails. It's a decent song, if a little straightforward and not exactly brimming over with originality. The same can't be said, however, of the next one.

“The Clansman” is another epic, indeed the second-longest at just a few seconds under nine minutes. Taking as its subject matter the struggle for Scottish independence, it's of course redolent of “Braveheart”, with the cry “Freedom!” echoing throughout. It starts off slowly, a kind of moody guitar taking up the first three minutes or so, then it gets going in a typical Maiden groove, somewhat reminscent of “Die with your boots on” from “Piece of mind”. Great guitar work from Gers and Murray, and some really fine singing from Blaze. The liner notes say Steve Harris plays keyboards on this, but I have to say I can't hear them. Maybe there, just in the background...

“When two worlds collide” is good rocky fare, and “The educated fool” is more a cruncher, but to be honest neither really stand out the way the better tracks on Maiden albums prior to (and after) this have done. You're not getting the likes of “Tailgunner”, “Run to the hills”, “Judas my guide” or even “Sun and steel” here, that's for sure. Harris does a good job of creating a string section on the keyboards for “Don't look to the eyes of a stranger”, but again they're more ancillary than upfront: the only track they really stand out on is “The angel and the gambler”, and maybe that's a good thing. “Stranger” goes through a few changes, from slow start to outright rocker, with a nice slow guitar buildup halfway to a real tearaway solo as the track hits full speed and careens towards the end. Good inventive drumming from Nicko McBrain on this track too.

The album ends on a tribute to both sides who fought the Falklands War, a nice acoustic guitar opening and some mournful strings on keyboard, then the guitars get going, but it stays fairly mid-paced, I suppose the closest you'll get on this album to a ballad. It's a good closer, with some excellent guitar work and an admirable anti-war theme.

So, was I wrong about this album? Listening back to it now, I have to say no, I wasn't, but perhaps I was a little harsh on it, dismissing it entirely. It has some good tracks on it, although sadly they are in the minority. That's not to say that the other tracks are necessarily bad, just below par for what I would expect from this band. Of course, having suffered through “The X factor” (the album, not the show, though that's almost as much a trial!) I suppose I should have been expecting this. It's no coincidence that once Bruce came back, it was “Brave new world” that blew me away and pulled me firmly back into the Maiden fold, and since then the albums have all been great, if not excellent.

Nothing against Blaze Bayley: he was probably on the spot and trying to fill some huge shoes, like Ray Wilson in Genesis. How could you follow the likes of Gabriel and Collins? You couldn't, and for me (and many thousands/millions of fans) Bruce Dickinson was and is Iron Maiden, so he had no chance really.

But in fairness the blame can't all be laid at Bayley's feet. The songs on this album, and the previous, in general, are not of the high quality we have come to expect, and the band did seem to be getting a little lazy, recycling old ideas and themes. The introduction of keyboards should have added to the sound, but to be honest, apart from that one song, I struggled to hear any real impact from them. Gers is a good guitarist, but I definitely missed Adrian Smith, and in addition to all that, this was the first Iron Maiden album since 1988's “Seventh son of a seventh son” to contain only eight tracks, so you kind of get the feeling of being shortchanged there too.

In conclusion, I would say that although I have a better appreciation for “Virtual XI” now, it's still rated very low on my scale of Maiden albums, and I wouldn't expect to be spinning it at any sort of regular intervals. If I make an Iron Maiden playlist, I would almost certainly include “The angel and the gambler”, “The Clansman” and maybe “Como estais amigos”, but the rest would be left behind, and if I never heard them again I wouldn't be too traumatised.

That's not the mark of a good album, nor even an average one. I would still class this under the heading “Must Try Harder”.

TRACKLISTING

1. Futureal
2. The angel and the gambler
3. Lightning strikes twice
4. The Clansman
5. When two worlds collide
6. The educated fool
7. Don't look to the eyes of a stranger
8. Como estais amigos
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