Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier (2010)
Iron Maiden is one of my favorite heavy metal bands of all time.
Satelite...15 The Final Frontier is one of Iron Maiden's best opening tracks on any of there albums. Very futuristic and very dark about an astronaut losing control and headed into the sun with no hope at all having no regrets. Bruce's vocals sound great here however, throughout the whole album you could hear Bruce's voice is a little bit strained all those years of singing the way he has must've taken a toll. Regardless he still sounds great.
El Dorado is a good track starts off with a galloping bass line a song about greed, a great guitar solo in here to.
Mother of Mercy A soldiers perspective of war. Great track has one of the best drums on this album.
Coming Home The song is about a pilot coming home, Bruce does a lot of operatic singing on this track like most tracks except you could hear that his voice is a bit strained on the operatic parts, as I've said before.
The Alchemist my favorite track on the album. Clocking at 4:29 it's the shortest track on the album and that's completley fine it ends appropriatley wouldn't want it any longer or shorter. The song is about mathematician and alchemist John Dee I dig the lyrics in this one.
Isle of Avalon A very subtle, but good track apparently about Avalon the guitar effects at the begining kind of remind me of The Who's BabOriley for some reason.
Starblind the lyrics here are very open and very good because of this it could be interpreted in many ways. Regardless this song has a great riff.
The Talisman the first track on the album to feature an accoustic (at the begining). This is a pretty good track some dark themes here about sailors fighting for there life in sea.
The Man Who Would Be King My second favorite track on the album. For some reason the begining of this song sounds like something Metallica would do. Not saying that it's a bad thing it sounds good in this case. The song probably has the best lyrics on the album, human reflection. I'd also like to add a lot of the songs on here including this one start out soft and then go big. At some points this is cool other times it seems a bit cliche.
When The Wild Wind Blows A very atmospheric opening to the last and longest track on the album clocking to 10:59. A very cryptic ending to I might add dealing with the end of the world. Overall a good closure. This album is good. Certainly not Maiden's worst or best. It shows that they still have it in them to produce some great music. None of the songs were necessarily bad in fact most if not all were good. The lyrics here are top notch along with the musicianship. The only real gripes I have is that Burce's voice is strained in a few of the songs. The cliche openings to some of the tracks starting off soft then stopping and going loud something that has been going on for quiet some time in metal (especially 80's) which does show some aging on Maidens part. And the fact that with the exception of 1 track the songs are quiet long which means that they could run you down a bit by listening to them making some songs sound similar to each other. This being said I thought this was a good album by Maiden standards, but there's always need for improvement on what I just mentioned.
Key Tracks: Satelite 15...The Final Frontier, The Alchemist and The Man Who Could Be King
7/10