Track title: “When the Wild Wind Blows”
Album: The Final Frontier
Year: 2010
Written by: Steve Harris
Subject: The fear of nuclear war
Type: Epic
Length: 10:59
Familiar? I kind of remember it a little
Rating: 5/10
Seriously? Another track from The Final Frontier? And this one an epic, a Steve Harris-penned monster just one second shy of eleven minutes. I half remember liking this though – and as I said in the last entry I was not impressed by the album on my one listen, so maybe this is a good sign – and I know it certainly made some impression on me at the time. Whether that was good or bad, I guess we'll see. Wind sounds, unsurprisingly, to start it off and then a dark instrumental intro which turns into something of a “Fear of the Dark” idea, but in fairness is not too long. It's one of those doomsayer songs, about, I assume, nuclear war. Quite restrained for the first two minutes before it breaks loose, though in fairness again it's just Bruce's voice getting louder; the song basically stays the same for now. The guitars get a little harder, yeah, but not a huge change really.
Good instrumental section around the middle when the guitars fire up and get going properly, kind of a militaristic feel to the melody – rather apt I guess – but it's hard to see how this isn't stretched out way too long. I mean, eleven minutes? No way it needs to be that long. It's the closing track, so maybe they felt like they wanted to make a statement, and it's not that it's a bad song, not at all, but like I said before about Steve, others need to rein him in. This could be eight, nine minutes tops. The guys do fill in the time with some good solos, but a well-written song shouldn't need things to fill it out. Then, again like “Fear of the Dark”, we reprise the opening by returning to where the song began. Hmm. Still not convinced really.
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