Music Banter - View Single Post - Trollheart's Comprehensive Guide to Iron Maiden

Trollheart · 03-19-2018, 10:46 AM

Track title: “The Man Who Would Be King”
Album: The Final Frontier
Year: 2010
Written by: Dave Murray/Steve Harris
Subject: I honestly have no idea. Another set of esoteric lyrics: something about a guy who killed someone and now wants to be king? Shrug.
Type: Epic rocker
Length: 8:28
Familiar? No
Rating: 5/10
Like many Maiden fans, I think, this is an album I was neither waiting breathlessly for – I hadn't paid much attention to A Matter of Life and Death or, indeed, for that matter, Dance of Death, and was possibly quietly going off Maiden – and when I did get to listen to it I was left with a general impression of “Yeah, so what?” It certainly wasn't the album to revitalise my love of the band, and I felt that since Brave New World they'd kind of rested on their laurels a little. Having hit the fans (including me) with the triumphant return of the decade-absent Bruce Dickinson, they really didn't seem to have capitalised on that, and I had lost interest. Like most people, my best Maiden albums are in the early to late eighties, those half-dozen opuses that run from Killers to Seventh Son, with maybe Fear of the Dark in there too.

One of Maiden's problems now, I feel, is that their tracks (much like, some would say, my reviews or my supposedly short stories!) are too long, and they go through too many changes and shifts to really appreciate them. Back in the “golden era”, a track like “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” would come along once in a few years, and being the exception to the rule, would be the better for it. I'm sure that if Powerslave or Seventh Son had had five or six nine or ten-minute tracks, I wouldn't have enjoyed them so much, and “Rime” would not probably have made the impression on me that it did. Even as I write, and this song plays, I still haven't really taken any notice of it. It hasn't impressed me, certainly not in the way a “Run to the Hills”, “The Evil That Men Do” or even a “Sun and Steel” did, and still do. Maybe it's just me.

No. No, it's definitely them.

03-19-2018, 10:46 AM	#83 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	Track title: “The Man Who Would Be King” Album: The Final Frontier Year: 2010 Written by: Dave Murray/Steve Harris Subject: I honestly have no idea. Another set of esoteric lyrics: something about a guy who killed someone and now wants to be king? Shrug. Type: Epic rocker Length: 8:28 Familiar? No Rating: 5/10 Like many Maiden fans, I think, this is an album I was neither waiting breathlessly for – I hadn't paid much attention to A Matter of Life and Death or, indeed, for that matter, Dance of Death, and was possibly quietly going off Maiden – and when I did get to listen to it I was left with a general impression of “Yeah, so what?” It certainly wasn't the album to revitalise my love of the band, and I felt that since Brave New World they'd kind of rested on their laurels a little. Having hit the fans (including me) with the triumphant return of the decade-absent Bruce Dickinson, they really didn't seem to have capitalised on that, and I had lost interest. Like most people, my best Maiden albums are in the early to late eighties, those half-dozen opuses that run from Killers to Seventh Son, with maybe Fear of the Dark in there too. One of Maiden's problems now, I feel, is that their tracks (much like, some would say, my reviews or my supposedly short stories!) are too long, and they go through too many changes and shifts to really appreciate them. Back in the “golden era”, a track like “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” would come along once in a few years, and being the exception to the rule, would be the better for it. I'm sure that if Powerslave or Seventh Son had had five or six nine or ten-minute tracks, I wouldn't have enjoyed them so much, and “Rime” would not probably have made the impression on me that it did. Even as I write, and this song plays, I still haven't really taken any notice of it. It hasn't impressed me, certainly not in the way a “Run to the Hills”, “The Evil That Men Do” or even a “Sun and Steel” did, and still do. Maybe it's just me. No. No, it's definitely them. __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018