Personally I prefer this modern era of the band to their 80's and 90's output. They've become more prog in their later years and it's kicked things up a notch or 5
In anticipation I spun their last three albums today while writing. Three very strong bodies of work that are enjoyable from beginning to end. And I'll even say that the last 3 stack up against any 3 album run in their discography.
I very much enjoy the reunion albums too, although I personally wouldn't go quite that far. In my book, the first 7-album run is one of the greatest in rock/metal history and very tough to beat. My favorite Maiden is probably Number of the Beast, although the sweetest spot in terms of wanting to go back and listen is probably with Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son.
I do rank the reunion albums higher than anything from No Prayer through VXI (with the possible exception of X Factor). My main issue with them, I guess, is that the "prog" element in many (not all) songs tends to show up with these recurring patterns of slow building intros and slightly excessive song lengths that could be reduced by trimming some of chorus repetitions
Plus I get the whole idea of capturing the performances in a slightly more spontaneous fashion, but as a result they do occasionally sound a little sloppier than they need to be in a studio setting (and not in the youthful inexperience/enthusiasm/ardor kind of way that makes the DiAnno records so special
). Just to go back to SiT/Seventh Son...those longer songs and those amazing instrumental/lead breaks sounded SO tight (in the best possible way!)
Anyway - you have to give it to Maiden: they are certainly still putting out high quality music. My favorite reunion record is Dance of Death, and Brave New World certainly holds a special place, as I remember the excitement when it came out. More recently, also thanks to the top songs thread, I have started appreciating Final Frontier much more - I didn't spend a whole lot of time with it at first, but I progressively found lots of interesting stuff going on in the songs.