Music review-Iron maiden:A matter of life and death

First things first Maiden is made of something much greater than what we hear on this album. Adrian Smith taking a break from a band for awhile and Bruce Dickinson dedicating himself to his two solo albums are a few aspects that could have taken a toll on the music of this album.

Nevertheless they still have the nack of writing music with the right proportions of what is needed. For die hard maiden fans this album may seem worth buying. It has got the Anthems like "Different world" and "These colors don't run" , the lyrics are serious and of course speaks volumes more than just those words and some of the riffs will definitely leave you head banging. Whatever you do just don't listen to the album with too much of expectations because they will spoil the first hearing and make you belive that it wasn't good enough for "Iron maiden". But the consequent hearing will definitely leave you nodding and smiling thinking how wrong you were earlier about them loosing the previous charm. The music is pretty dense and so it takes time for the melodies and the lyrics to sink in.

In the First hearing the album sounds strinkingly similar to the album "Dance of Death". There is the same aura of mystery and seriousness with the same tones of plucking and strumming of the lead in the beginning of the tracks. And the epic like song "Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg" starts of just as "Dance of Death" with the lyric "Let me tell you ..". On and on the songs sound like anthology of all other Maiden tracks only put together with different lyrics. Bruce's heavenly tones sometimes seems to sink down to earthy blandness which makes the music sound gaudy.

Compared to albums like "Number of the beast", "Brave new world", "Seventh son", "Dance of Death" and so on which were excellent this one is an "above average". I'd still say its definitely lacks "Iron Maiden' s raw musical magic".