Amateur Megalomania

The Beast is back.

A Matter of Life and Death (henceforth AMOLAD) is the 14th studio album from Iron Maiden, and marks the third studio album since Bruce Dickinson’s return as the lead singer.

Long time Maiden fans have to pause and marvel at the concept: thirty-one years after the formation of the band, they are still producing high quality material. Most bands, at this point, have become pale imitations of past glory, rehashing the some old act and the some old sound. Pick a typical nostalgia mega-tour for the boomers, and try to find something new in the music.

I’ve had AMOLAD for a few days now, enough to get familiar with the new sound. This is a new Maiden, with enough of the old Maiden for continuity. This is a matured, experienced band operating as a whole and pushing into new territory.

This is the Maiden you would have preferred if you were horrified by the synthesizers on Somewhere in Time in 1986.

Since Brave New World in 2000, the band has had three guitar players in addition to Harris on bass. AMOLAD is the first album, in my opinion, to carry that many instruments so cleanly and with a distinctively ‘different’ sound. The guitar work approaches an orchestral quality, with so many parts complimenting one another so well. It never sounds as if a particular guitar has nothing to add and maybe should be tacit.

Bruce is Bruce, meaning he gets better each year. The past few years have been kind to fans with a solo work releasing between Maiden projects (Tyranny of Souls). His voice just keeps getting stronger with more control. You don’t hear much of the whiny, straining Bruce from the Fear of the Dark album.

All around, the band is as good as ever – not bad for a bunch of guys hitting their fifties.

The album itself is only ten tracks, but runs seventy-one plus minutes. Track length varies from 4:17 to 9:24 (with a 9:20 tossed in there as well). This is epic Maiden, with plenty of time changes, key changes, and alternating themes, giving most songs the feel of a very long story. Think Rime of the Ancient Mariner for most of the album.

As you might surmise by the album title, most of the songs deal with the weighty issues of the day: war, religion, and the ability to kill large numbers of people.

“Brighter Than A Thousand Suns” focuses on the Manhattan Project and nuclear weapons by asking -

Bury your morals and bury your dead
Bury your head in the sand
E-mc squared you can relate
How we made God
With our hands

Whatever would Robert have said to his God
About how we made war with the sun
E=mc squared you can relate
How we made God
With out hands

“The Longest Day”, of course, tells the tale of D-Day -

Overlord, your master not your god
The enemy coast drawing gray with scud
These wretched souls puking, shaking fear
To take a bullet for those who sent them here

The world’s alight, the cliffs erupt in flame
No escape, remorseless shrapnel rains
Drowning men no chance for a warrior’s fate
A choking death enter hell’s gates

These songs, looking into the past, are intermingled with songs about the present. Maiden rightfully shows the parallels between where we’ve been and where we are heading in terms of conflict.

“The Greater Good of God” lays it out in the longest track on the album, penned solely by Harris -

Are you a man of peace
Or a man of holy war
Too many sides to you
Don’t know which anymore
So many full of life
But also filled with pain
Don’t know just how many
Will live to breathe again

…

More pain and misery in the history of mankind
Sometimes it seems more like
The blind leading the blind
It brings upon us more famine, death and war
You know religion has a lot to answer for

And in a surprising final verse, we have -

He gave his life for us
He fell upon the cross
To die for all of those
who never mourn his loss
It wasn’t meant for us
to feel the pain again
Tell me why, tell me why

In a bonus DVD, Steve Harris notes he is not pro-religious or anti-religious. His intent here is to simply ask how is God served by a faith that preaches death as a way to eternal reward.

AMOLAD is a busy album, with lots to ponder in nearly every track. I’ll be cycling this one through the iPod for the next couple of weeks, and it will take a prominent place in the Iron Maiden collection.

Here’s to many more years of the Beast.

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