The Final Frontier (2010)
After spending two years looking back, it was time for Maiden to move forward yet again with their fifteenth studio album. Shortly following the Somewhere Back In Time tour, the band went to Paris to write the album. The first thing that was conceived for was actually the title, which came from Bruce Dickinson. Toward the end of the tour, Bruce suggested to Steve that they call the next album The Final Frontier due to the rabid speculation it would inspire.The title would also lend itself to a sci-fi theme that the band had explored previously in its history. It would be new but familiar territory, a theme that would seem to dominate the making of this album.
Nearly the entire album was written and rehearsed in Paris. The songwriting partnerships found on A Matter of Life and Death seemed to carry over with Steve Harris having a writing credit on every song (including one song entirely credited to him) and Adrian Smith contributing a huge bulk of the music. In fact, Smith has his largest contribution ever on a Maiden album with six out of the ten songs having his name attached. Janick Gers has writing credits on two songs, one short rocker and one epic, while Dave Murray’s sole contribution is the epic The Man Who Would Be King. Bruce provides lyrics on four songs (ironically not the title track), which is close to his normal contribution on a Maiden album.
The band had two weeks in Paris to write the album and mostly worked off demos that were brought in by the guitar players. The rehearsals proved to be very productive with the band being able to run through 7 of the 10 songs by the end. The band meant to rehearse The Man Who Would Be King as the eighth song but, unfortunately, the Paris sessions came to an abrupt stop when Janick cut his hand on a door. He was rushed to the hospital and had to undergo surgery on his hands and fingers, meaning the rehearsals would have to come to an end. The remaining two songs were The Alchemist and When the Wild Wind Blows, which had not yet been completed by that point.
Once Janick recovered, it was off to the studio to record with Kevin Shirley once again at the helm. This time, the band decided on a familiar setting to record the album: Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas. Compass Point, of course, was the location where countless classic albums were recorded, including Piece of Mind, Powerslave, and about half of Somewhere In Time. The band felt that by visiting a familiar location, they would settle in quicker and be more comfortable overall. As it turned out, the studio was seemingly exactly as they had left it in 1986. It was recorded in the typical quick modern Maiden format of devoting just a day to each song. A few days were spent setting up the recording room and then the band quickly began work starting on Coming Home and ending with When the Wild Wind Blows. After basic tracks for each song were recorded, guitar solos, harmonies, and other embellishments were cut. Finally, with the help of Michael Kenney, Steve Harris recorded some synth lines to top it all off. Although Bruce was present in Nassau during the recording, he ended up redoing all of his vocals at Kevin Shirley’s home studio in California after the production wrapped up.
Musically, The Final Frontier is very much a continuation of where the band was headed with A Matter of Life and Death. The prog rock influence continues to grow to the point of almost becoming the dominant style. By this point, even several members of the band (as well as Kevin Shirley) began to describe Iron Maiden as a Progressive Rock band rather than a Metal band. There’s still debate among fans over exactly how to describe the band, but it’s largely agreed that The Final Frontier is the proggiest album since Somewhere In Time. Despite having such a prog influence, there’s very little on the album that is actually new ground for Maiden. Nearly every song is reminiscent of something Maiden had done before. The Talisman features an extended acoustic opening similar to The Legacy, the title track is a short rocker in the mold of every opener since Futureal, and Starblind continues the combination of psychedelic sounds and heavy riffing found in Lord of Light. That’s not to say there isn’t anything new here, however. On this album the band experiment with backmasked tracks in The Man Who Would Be King, more layered arrangements throughout, and of course there’s the highly experimental album intro which is unlike anything they had done before. That being said, on the whole, The Final Frontier serves as a sort of summary of the modern Maiden sound. A punctuation mark to the last ten years.
While there were many rumors that The Final Frontier would be another concept album, or another album with a running theme like A Matter of Life and Death, this was ultimately not the case. Unlike its predecessor, The Final Frontier is very lyrically diverse. There are songs about alchemists, pilgrims, current events, and, of course, space. That being said, there are recurring themes that appear on the album, such as death and the afterlife. Although these are themes that tend to crop up in every Maiden album, so it doesn’t seem like there was a deliberate focus on anything in particular. It is worth mentioning, and members of the band have said as much, that as they get older and the end of their long career draws nearer, these things are naturally on their mind more often and show up more in their lyrics.
While a running theme isn’t apparent in the lyrics, there is an obvious pattern in the sequencing of the songs when looking at the track lengths. On this album, the short songs and the long songs were grouped separately. It almost has the vibe of a double album (although the actual sequencing on the vinyl version does not follow this). The Final Frontier starts with short accessible tracks that in a lot of ways resemble classic Maiden before switching gears entirely to the more progressive and dense epics. This was a controversial move. Some fans liked the division and the way the album was essentially in two “parts”, while other fans found the album to get tedious in the second half and would’ve preferred shorter tracks to balance it out. Regardless of the sequencing, there is more of a balance between short and long songs than there was on A Matter of Life and Death, in addition to a wider variety of musical and lyrical content. So it’s safe to say that The Final Frontier has something for almost every Maiden fan.
On the more accessible first half of the album, there’s a nice blend of heavy hitting rockers, ballads, and more matured mid paced tunes. This portion of the album is also heavily dominated by Adrian Smith, with four of the five songs having Smith in the credits. The album opener is technically two seperate pieces, as the ellipses in the title implies. Satellite 15 is perhaps the most experimental thing the band has ever released. Most of what you hear on the piece is actually a demo created by Adrian Smith, complete with bass synthesizers and drum machines. Adrian’s original intention was for Maiden to eventually record the demo as a band, as was always the case, but Steve decided he liked the atmosphere of the demo and insisted that they keep it. Being a notorious perfectionist, Adrian was against the decision but was ultimately overruled. So Bruce recorded the vocal passages and no other changes were made. This was another controversial aspect of the album as the piece is quite obviously a demo. The drum machine even has a very audible “skip” during the finale. Most fans seemed to enjoy it though and it was exciting to hear Maiden doing something different with what was possibly their most daring opening to an album.
On the total opposite end of the spectrum, the proper title track is exactly what fans have come to expect for a Maiden opener in 2010. Another collaboration between Adrian and Steve, The Final Frontier is a driving rocker in the vein of the last three Maiden openers. This time the song almost has a 70s classic rock vibe with the simple guitar riff and mid paced tempo. The lyrics obviously have a sci fi theme to them, describing the thought process of an astronaut who is about to die alone in space. While Satellite 15 describes pure panic, The Final Frontier shows the protagonist reaching the stage of acceptance of his fate.
The other three short songs that Adrian brought in really run the gamut of the more straightforward side of Maiden. One of the three, Mother of Mercy, has the feel of a leftover from A Matter of Life and Death. It features a solo intro followed by heavier steady paced verses and a soaring chorus, a structure that was found on much of the previous album. To add to that, Steve Harris’ lyrics are about a soldier of war and broach many of the same topics found in songs like These Colours Don’t Run and For the Greater Good of God. The final two featured the classic Smith/Harris/Dickinson combination. El Dorado, the album’s lead single, is one of the most classic Maiden sounding tracks that this lineup has produced. It prominently and shamelessly features the classic Maiden gallop that had become a sort of rarity in the band’s modern output. The instrumental section also features an intense guitar tradeoff that includes all three players as soloists. The lyrics, penned by Bruce, describe a conman selling his “snake oil’, seemingly inspired by scheming politicians and the fairly recent stock market crash of 2008. Coming Home takes things in an entirely different direction, being a subtle ballad filled with guitar harmonies, 80s styled back-to-back solos from Dave and Adrian, and aviation themed lyrics from Bruce. Prior to Dance of Death, ballads from Maiden were fairly rare, now they had three albums in a row with ballads. Coming Home marks a pretty clear progression from Journeyman and Out of the Shadows with prominent acoustic guitars and a huge live ready chorus.
The last of the album’s short songs is one of Janick’s two contributions to the album. Just like on A Matter of Life and Death, Janick brought in a short rocker and an epic with an extended acoustic intro. The rocker was composed in a similar way to The Pilgrim, with Janick bringing in a demo that was then arranged into a song by Steve, but this time Bruce contributed the lyrics. The title for the song was originally The House of Dr. Dee but then changed to The Alchemist, with no relation to Bruce Dickinson’s solo song of the same name. Bruce had an instrumental demo to work with and came out with a song about John Dee, a mathematician who had a particular interest in alchemy. It’s a subject that was studied extensively in The Chemical Wedding, but Bruce takes this particular song in a completely different direction. There is less discussion of alchemy and more recounting of the character’s life. Musically, The Alchemist is probably the most straightforward song on the album (it is also the shortest). It’s a fast paced riff driven rocker that is reminiscent of Janick’s contributions in the 90s. It is a nice way to close out the first half of the album before things get proggier and less accessible.
The “epic” side of the album kicks off with two more Smith compositions. Both Isle of Avalon and Starblind came from Adrian’s own demos that were subsequently worked into full songs with Steve Harris. Both are also arguably the proggiest tracks Maiden have ever recorded. Both feature sudden and unexpected shifts in dynamics, long exploratory guitar solos, and odd time signatures. The instrumental section to Isle of Avalon even sounds like something Rush would’ve come up with. Although both are very unique, Starblind feels like a continuation of the style that Steve and Adrian developed on Lord of Light, the song has also been compared to Infinite Dreams. The two songs also seem to mirror each other lyrically. Steve wrote the lyrics for Avalon and Bruce wrote the lyrics for Starblind. The former details Celtic myths of immortality while the latter takes a more agnostic approach describing the lack of an afterlife.
Following these two heavy hitters are a pair of epics from the other two Maiden guitarists (one from each). The Talisman is Janick’s second contribution to the album and is a collaboration with Steve Harris. Musically, the song drew a lot of comparisons to The Legacy. Both feature an extended acoustic intro followed by heaviness, Both are in the key of D and make great use of alternate tunings. The comparisons really end there though, as The Talisman is clearly its own entity. Where The Legacy’s intro had a nursery rhyme feel, The Talisman is much darker and plays more like a sea chanty. When the song gets going, it’s far heavier and much more fast paced than The Legacy. Also unlike The Legacy, once it gets heavy it stays that way for the remainder of the song. The song is also lyrically far removed from The Legacy and is actually closer to The Pilgrim in that regard. The song details a group of pilgrims travelling by ship. This time Steve decided to describe their struggles on the ship and their near failure, somewhat similar to A Salty Dog by Procol Harum (a song that Steve was no doubt influenced by in some way or another). Despite being a 9 minute epic with an extended acoustic opening, The Talisman is one of the heaviest and most energetic songs on the album, making it an obvious choice for the live set.
From Dave Murray comes one of his most ambitious Maiden contributions: The Man Who Would Be King. It is one of the most complicated songs on the album, with many different moving parts and guitar melodies. It also contains some sonic experimentation, most notably a backwards guitar solo from Dave. The idea to backmask the guitar solo came from Kevin Shirley. When presented with the idea, Dave, a big Jimi Hendrix fan, loved it. There was much speculation about what this song would be about before the release of the album. Some pointed to a film of the same name starring Sean Connery, others pointed to the Dio song of the same name, and some pointed out that perhaps it’s linked the final line in Revelations. Ultimately, none of these theories were correct. Steve’s lyrics instead cover the plight of a man who has committed murder and his subsequent quest for redemption.
The album closes out with the obligatory Steve Harris epic. When the Wild Wind Blows is a song that Steve actually began working on back in the 90s, but it was never completed. Years later, he dug out an old demo and sought to finally complete it. The other members of the band themselves didn’t get to hear the final product until it was completely recorded. When it came time to record, Steve presented the song in separate parts. They would learn a small part of the song, cut it, and then move on to the next part. Kevin Shirley was then left with the task of reassembling the recordings into a single coherent recording. The result was an eleven minute monster epic that became the band’s third longest song, behind The Sign of the Cross and Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It was also their third to surpass the 10 minute mark. Needless to say, expectations for this song were especially high prior to its release. It seemed to meet those expectations for the most part, although it did catch many listeners off guard by being so straightforward. The song stays at a consistent tempo and dynamic for the most part, foregoing complex musical sections and sudden unexpected shifts in favor of simply letting the music accompany the story. It was a surprisingly Dickinson approach to songwriting. The lyrics are indeed a central part of this song, being a storytelling epic in the vein of Dance of Death and Rime. The song is based on the 1986 animated film When the Wind Blows, about an elderly couple who try to survive the fallout of a nuclear bomb. Unlike songs like Rime or To Tame a Land, the source material here only serves as inspiration for the initial idea before Steve takes it in his own direction. It is without a doubt one of his most emotional lyrics and features some of his most effective storytelling. It’s a more than appropriate way to close out the album and was accepted by many fans as the band’s swan song if this was to be the band’s final album (of course that was not the case).
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