Fear of the Dark - 1992
Tracklist:
1. Be Quick or Be Dead.
2. From Here to Eternity.
3. Afraid to Shoot Strangers.
4. Fear is the Key.
5. Childhood’s End.
6. Wasting Love.
7. The Fugitive.
8. Chains of Misery.
9. The Apparition.
10. Judas Be My Guide.
11. Weekend Warrior.
12. Fear of the Dark.
https://open.spotify.com/album/16Su3EUFLPqWVyrwN1q5wO?si=lpzSdLoxSqOciFr_J7wiFwWARNING: There is a song on this album that really irks me, and I wasn't afraid ripping it a new one. I have used the censored emoji, but if it offends you to see this song being torn apart, remember that all of this is subjective. Right, onto it!
After using the Rolling Stone Mobile Studio for
No Prayer for the Dying and having less than stellar results, Steve Harris ended up fleshing out his set up into a fully-fledged recording studio, nicknamed Barnyard, which Martin Birch helped to supervise the sound of. The first album produced there became the longest to date and the band’s first double LP. Inspired by the turn of the decade, there were a lot of darker themes on this album, with the concept of fear permeating through in several places.
So is this album a light in the black, or a dark spot in the band’s discography? Let’s dive in.
Be Quick or Be Dead wastes no time in smacking you over the head with it’s aggressive, almost thrash metal sound. This song is absolutely ferocious, opening with a killer riff and an awesome scream from Bruce. Lyrically,
Be Quick or Be Dead targets dodgy deals and corruption within the political system at the time. While many would probably find fault with Bruce’s vocal style on this song, I have to admit this is a highlight for me straight out of the gate. I really hope this makes a comeback someday. Nicko’s drumming is absolutely driving here and it’s just a high point for the album, adding some much needed ballsiness that I felt was missing from No Prayer.
The same cannot be said for
From Here to Eternity, however. This song is the return and ultimate end of Charlotte the Harlot, who meets up with the devil and takes a motorcycle ride that ultimately ends in their deaths. Sadly, the lyrics are lacking, even from the lust filled lyrics from her debut. The solos on this song are an absolute highlight, and the chorus does have some real singalong quality, but ultimately, there’s no real body to the song and kinda feels like a song written just to be a single. Bruce ends the track saying something about “Get on your M11” which is the highway linking North-East London to Cambridge, so at least we have an approximate location of where she died, I guess? I don't know why, but I just don’t really like this song much.
Back to some killer Maiden material, and one of the only songs that Maiden has ever returned to after the initial touring behind the album.
Afraid to Shoot Strangers is about the Gulf War and “
how shitty war is that it's started by politicians and has to be finished by ordinary people that don't really want to kill anybody” as Bruce puts it. It’s a unique position for a war song for Maiden in that this doesn’t deal with the combat like
The Trooper or the aftermath like Metallica’s
One. Instead, this gets into the head of a soldier about to go to battle. While the final verse is a little bit shaky, I think this has some really great lyrics. With the opening ballad section over, we move into a classic sounding Maiden with great guitar leads and impressive soloing feats. This is a great song, and another huge highlight on the album. This was brought back on the Maiden England tour in 2012 and 2013 until it was replaced by
Revelations, but I really hope they bring it back again before Maiden calls it a day. It's pretty special with the three guitars, so here's a quick link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZNkhRyUVHUFear is the Key is a song about AIDS. I think the riff rocks, and there’s definitely a bluesy element to it all. There’s actually a lot of greatness in this song, and I have to really agree with one of the key lines to this song, being “nobody cares until someone famous dies”. And then you get past a decent solo section into the second bridge, and the song just changes for the worst. I think the instrumental under this bridge has a lot going for it, but Bruce just goes too far into weird territory for me. It’s not a bad song, but there is some odd choices made and I think it could’ve been a far better song. Ah well.
One song that I really love that I never see anyone talking about is
Childhood’s End. These lyrics take a look at children dying because their so-called leaders don’t care about them, and basically goes on to say that humans can’t remain children when there are so many pointless wars and catastrophes. Everything about this song is amazing. There’s a real emotional element to the riffs and a huge tension in the verses and the sparseness of the choruses. And then there’s all the soloing goodness, of course. And it all comes to an abrupt halt with the only utterance of the title. Hands down, one of my favourite songs from the 90s and wouldn’t you know, Maiden never touched it live. If they’re gonna start changing the rules and playing songs that have never been played after 37 years, they can turn around and do this one from 32 years ago next tour, thanks very much.
Wasting Love is probably the closest that Maiden ever really got to a ‘love song’, and it’s also one of their first real power ballads. This talks about the loneliness that comes from having sex with a lot of different people but never really coming to love someone or care about them beyond that momentary pleasure. This is Iron Maiden’s 9th most streamed song on Spotify, which I find interesting as, while it is a decent song, it’s so outside of what I consider classic Maiden that it almost doesn’t register as being their song, it always feels like solo Bruce to me somehow.
One of the deeper cuts for the album is another one that I’ve always really liked,
The Fugitive. This is much like
The Prisoner in that it’s based off of the TV series (which coincidentally was made into a film with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones the following year). This just has a great vibe to it, and Bruce sells the story perfectly. I’ve always really liked the intro, starting heavy and then breaking down into the clean. I also really like the way this comes back around after the first solo, which manages to have an air of mystery and danger to it. This also pulls off a great plot twist, where Bruce says “even if I’m proven innocent, now I gotta get them all and make them pay”. I think it’s a great song, so of course, it’s another one that Maiden never played live. They’re getting great at that on the last few albums.
Going back to the bluesier vibe, we have
Chains of Misery. According to Bruce, this lyric is about the devil on your shoulder, dishing out the worst possible advice that, if heeded, would absolutely ruin your life. It’s such a rocker of a song, and the solo section is a totally different vibe that compliments the song so well. This is a song with a co-writing credit from Dave Murray, and it’s probably the least Dave Murray song since
Charlotte the Harlot. This is a pretty short song that doesn’t really leave me with a whole lot to say about it, but I enjoy it.
Ok, the f
just happened?
The Apparition takes all the good will I had for this album, crumpled it up and threw it back in my face. This song is terrible. And the problem with that is that the riff that kicks us into the solo section would have been a perfect main riff for the song. The solos themselves are great, and the harmony is absolutely killer. But when you stick that in the middle of something so bland and repetitive as this, it just can’t save it. The lyric itself is actually excellent and full of great life advice. Just, I don’t want to hear Bruce out. This song shouldn’t have happened, and if it had to, they should have done a lot better. Bruce is almost kicking back like he’s about to bust into an early 90s rap, the backing track is uninspired, and the “chorus” turnaround is weak. No stars awarded.
EUGH!Judas Be My Guide takes on the hard task of trying to win us back after that, and it actually does a fairly admirable job. This is another Dickinson / Murray credit, and this absolutely slaps! As one of Maiden’s shortest songs (not counting
Ides of March), this takes on a solid pace and doesn’t waste much time. On Bruce’s first solo album, there is a song called
Son of a Gun with a lyric that mentions “In a blood red sunrise, take me to Jesus with Judas my guide”. That line gave Bruce the inspiration to flesh it out into a full song, and I’m glad it did, because this is another highlight. Everything here is top notch, and I’d even recommend checking out the LORD cover, which came up during my roulette.
Weekend Warrior is a bit of filler, which a lot of people don’t really care for, but I like enough when it’s on. Lyrically, this song is about football hooliganism, and the “fake fans” that don’t care about the game in the slightest but live for starting fights. I have to say, I like the reset between at the end of verses, though I wish it had reverted to just the guitars without Bruce repeating the last line. The solos are killer, the harmony is fantastic, and even if the rest is a little bit mundane, it’s good filler unlike
The Apparition which is a total waste of nearly 4 minutes. Sorry, that song was that bad.
We end the album on the title track and the big classic that hasn’t left the setlist for more than a single year since release,
Fear of the Dark. The lyric here is exactly what we all know, being the fear of something being hiding in the darkness that we can’t see until it’s too late. I must admit to something that I think every single Maiden fan has found since probably 2002 when Rock in Rio released, I don’t think the studio version has much impact on me, while the live versions are always stellar. I don’t know what it is, but this song really comes to life on stage, where I don’t know that the album version ever really did. Nonetheless, this closes the album out on a strong note that I think we all needed. Since I did make mention of
Wasting Love’s streaming record, I may as well mention that this is currently Maiden’s number 3 most popular on Spotify. If there’s one thing I don’t love about this song, it’s that it all closes on the clean closing vocals. I just wish it had ended a bit stronger since it is the album closer.
And that’s
Fear of the Dark. I must say, I wasn’t looking forward to revisiting this one, which did contribute to the lateness of this writeup. This does mark the breaking point for the band, as shortly after this album’s release, Bruce left the band in a far less than positive manner. The third show of the tour was particularly notable though, as the opening band was none other than Dream Theater, who were still a month out from
Images and Words.
This album is such a mixed bag that I don’t know if I like it or not. There are a few pretty great songs, and then there’s tunes like
From Here to Eternity and
The ing
Apparition that kinda plague this album. I’m keen to have some discussion on this one to see what you guys think. With Bruce gone,
The X Factor comes next.
Topic: Re: Deadeye Deep Dives: Iron Maiden (Volume 11. Virtual XI) (Read 2524 times)
