Originally Posted by Trollheart

A Matter of Life and Death - Iron Maiden (2006)
Genre: Heavy Metal

This is where I cheat. It's the first time, but it won't be the last. IDGAF. This is chosen not by random selection but after continual requests from Batty that I give it another shot. So I will. I haven't paid too much attention to any Maiden album really since Brave New World; none of them have impressed me sufficiently to have me come back for a second go. This, from what I remember, went in one ear and out the other, the first and only time I listened to it. Yeah, it's kind of the same really. I can hear a few tracks I might like to try again - “These Colours Don't Run”, “Brighter Than a Thousand Suns”, “For the Greater Good of God” - but mostly there are two problems here, and they apply to all other post-BNW albums too. One, the songs are mostly too long. Looking down the track list here, there are only three songs under six minutes, and only one under five. Maiden songs used not to need to be this long. For me, it can make them tedious and boring. And two, many of the songs here remind me of earlier Maiden songs, suggesting (as I've posited before) that they are running out of ideas. I see little here that would bring me back, on the face of this listen.

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.