Track title: “Futureal”
Album: Virtual XI
Year: 1998
Written by: Steve Harris/Blaze Bayley
Subject: Not sure: something about the future?
Type: Fast rocker/headbanger
Length: 3:00
Familiar? No
Rating: 5/10
And another album I'm not familiar with, and probably never will be, as it really did not click with me despite repeated listenings. I find it odd though that this song was apparently voted as one of the best Iron Maiden songs of all time by fans in a poll, though of course you can make a poll say anything you want: 85% of people will tell you that.
Time to give it another chance? Let's be fair and say it rocks like ****, which is something I could say of nothing on the previous album (shut up, I won't kill myself, Blue Hawk) and it has an immediacy about it that, perhaps, when I heard the album first, might have convinced me this was the one to turn it around. It wasn't. But I feel the vocal is not quite weak, but hasn't got the personality and charisma Bruce tends to put into the songs. Yeah, I'm a Bruce fanboy, will be till I die. Sue me.
Never a problem with the solos of course, and the boys put in a fine show here, though as usual on these two albums I do miss Adrian. At least they learned their lesson (maybe) from
The X Factor and started this album off with a short song instead of a goddamn epic. Good abrupt ending too. I still don't love it, but if more of the album had been like this I think I might have a slightly higher opinion of it than I do.