What went wrong with Maiden... And a few photos of my Maiden collection (logical combination???) and this title is getting very long and annoying. I better stop it right now. Yes, I must do that right away. Immediately. Pronto.

22.9.

This is my Maiden collection (except for Eddie's Archive and a few dvds - So I guess I cannot be considered a real fan:D Real Maiden fans have to have much more stuff, even shitty albums... Notice all this is from the 80s:)

Iron Maiden, one of my all time favorites, is one of those bands who seems to be Caught in a specific Time, if you catch my haiku. I mean, think about the 80s and if you leave the thrash bands out (earliest of which only really started to record in roughly 1983) there is nothing quite like Maiden. Even my number one band, Judas Priest clearly pales in comparison - Maiden made 7 perfect studioalbums, one perfect live album and 20 something maxisingles with material that in many cases could nicely fit on most bands' albums. The song-writing was near perfect (often thanks to Steve Harris) with heavy, yet catchy riffs and on each album would in some cases grow to real, epic masterpieces. Yet they always had songs like Wrathchild or Iron Maiden to give their audience instant, easy pleasure. Bruce Dickinson seemed to be invincible, the perfect front man ranting the audiences into rage against radio stations and their policies, hair metal, posers, whatnot.

All the four full-length official* live albums (with their studio counterparts) I know of that they released in the 80s. Maiden England came with the Vhs back in the day, Beast over Hammersmith is in Eddie's Archive and Maiden Japan... well, we'll get to that later...

In 1988, 1989 they seemed to be on top of the world... So what the hell happened in the 90s? It seems overnight they turned into something, Bruce later called (after having left the band to start a solo career) a bunch of b-rate has-beens.

Well, yeah... Maiden Japan (17 track version) is not official, rather semi-official to be honest:) But it was given to the members of Japanese Iron Maiden fan club members and it sounds pretty damn good.

Well, it is obvious Adrian Smith left the band. Yes, guitarists are no virtuoses in Iron Maiden, but Smith's chemistry with Murray never quite seemed to be duplicated by "Jan Snickers" - even though he is in no way a bad player (check out the stuff he did with Gillan *IF YOU don't BELIEVE ME*). Yup, that's one reason, but hardly everything. Another reason is that the quality of song-writing, Maiden's most crucial backbone, is decreasing rapidly. Check out songs like Holy Smoke or Wasting Love (both of these are actually single cuts... Can you believe it???) and you hear immediately this stuff would not have made it in their 80s albums.Or how about From Here to Eternity? Or Weekend Warrior? Holy Sm... Shit! Third reason might be the fact that Dickinson's voice chords had suffered greatly with the gruelling tour schedule Maiden has and did not have enough time to recover until he quit the band.

Just in case, here's the tracklist. It's really good, maybe the heaviest and best live album they ever released in terms of intensity and energy - Di'Anno's singing style does, however, put some people off.

But, to be fair, Fear of the Dark's title track is okay, especially in a live setting. The Assassin kicks ass, as does Be Quick or Be Dead. Harris wanted to go back to the roots and make shorter, more vicious tracks and in some cases he managed to do precisely that. But Wasting Love? Come on, tracks like that fail to deliver what Maiden had always been about. On the other hand, you could also argue how the hard touring had taken its toll and that they already were in a steady decline in the end of the 80s. I mean, I've always considered Somewhere in Time one of their greatest albums, but songs like Wasted Years and Stranger are in essence pop songs played by a rock band. For some reason many Maiden fans go on and on about how great Seventh Son is, but to be honest songs like Can I Play with Madness have nothing to do with classic, great metal and everything to do with pop groups like Duran Duran...

Maybe my favourite maxisingle cover Maiden has... And a nice example that not all Maiden songs are about history or war or airplanes...

On Seventh Son, I think there is only one amazing track - Infinite Dreams. It flows beautifully eventhough there are quite a few surprise changes in the rhythm. Several parts and textures, a trully progressive track without forcing anything. The last real classic Maiden treat. Moonchild is a decent opener, but a far cry from anything the previous albums started with (Aces High? Where Eagles Dare? Caught...? Hell, I'd even rather hear the unintentionally hilarious Invaders...). Can I Play, as mentioned earlier is an atrocity. And the poppy Evil that Men Do doesn't make things much better, though I guess it's the logical continuum for Wasted Years. The title track is boring (the chorus is annoying, the quiet middle section is only a ripoff from Rime of the Ancient Mariner's majestically creaking ship boards) until that last, faster section kicks in. Prophecy gives a promise of something great, but never quite reaches its initial promise, though that acoustic outro really broadens the sound nicely (and is a gentle nod to Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell, I guess). Clairvoyant is good, but quite soft. And Only the Good Die Young is completely forgettable, though not bad. Such a letdown after tracks like Hallowed, To Tame a Land, Rime... or Alexander the Great on previous albums.

...And here's the final addition, Purgatory maxi single which I didn't yet have when I took the photo from the whole collection of Maidens... Eddie looks like me after a good sauna...

No Prayer really isn't that much worse... Assassin, Public Enema, Fates Warning or Mother Russia are decent, but even the majestic finishing track seems hurried and never reaches its true potential. So, while the drop in the quality isn't a huge one, No Prayer is the first time Maiden fails to make an album with at least one classic, great track and the general quality falls also under the mark of being relevant. In my honest opinion, they never rose to level they maintained throughout the 80s. The Bl-ass Bailey years were the most hideous, the man simply cannot sing the kind of music he was made to sing (yeah, Di'Anno wasn't the greatest singer either, but he, like Bruce, can be considered a singer, not a yoddleying joke). Probably Blaze is a very nice person and a good camarade, and probably he sings well with his other projects. But with Maiden... come on, I even started to hate the Trooper when I had to "enjoy" his interpretation. Bruce's comeback helped a bit, but those long symphonic 8+ minutes songs just drag on and on and repeat the same goddamn riffs until my minuscule brain melts and pours down my ear into a crack in the floor for the ants to eat. All of their 2000s albums make me snore before the halfway - especially compared to those 80s Golden Years... Oops, an unintentional reference...

And here's my collection once more... Notice also the sensual, enticing sleeve of my bath robe...