In listening to my FOTD-Senjutsu run the last two weeks, I have a few more thoughts.
Fear of the Dark - I find myself rather enjoying some parts, but on the whole it’s just so disappointing for a Maiden album. I never use the word “pedestrian” in an artistic sense, because I feel it makes you sound pretentious when you say it. But I just can’t come up with a better descriptive term for the album. It feels like when you go to see a fairly cool local bar band that’s been around awhile, and they have a CD, and they are tight, and you singalong to some of their catchier tracks and you wonder why these guys aren’t bigger…then you get home and put on the CD *without* the beer and you go…”meh, there’s a couple of good tracks here, but it’s really not as good as I remember it being in the bar.” I think most of us have had that experience, and that’s what this album feels like. Yes…there are a couple of really fantastic tracks, but most of the rest is just either OK, or downright klunky. The Apparition sounds like an AC/DC idea that even Malcolm would have turned into a b-side. Meanwhile, the opener, the title track, and maybe a couple of others save it. ATSS is really excellent, and I love the chorus for FHTE even if the verses are a bit klunky. Wasting Love is surprisingly good considering the hate I see it get. There’s far worse songs here. The rest is mostly forgettable.
I pretty much agree with this, unfortunately. I listened to it last week for the first time in years, wondering if I would hear it differently than I always had, and... I didn't. The songs just aren't there, with a couple of notable exceptions. To me, it feels like an album that doesn't know what it wants to be.
No Prayer for the Dying had more of a direction, more of a focus. I didn't particularly enjoy that direction, but it was there, and some of the results were pretty good.
Fear of the Dark feels like an album that wants to do a lot of different things, and doesn't do many of them particularly well.
What it does well is Maiden's brand of prog-infused heavy metal, which it does on two tracks: Fear of the Dark and Afraid to Shoot Strangers. That's exactly the side of the band's songwriting that it feels like they're repressing both here and on
No Prayer, but those times when it partially breaks through are among the brightest spots on those two albums. The "best of the rest" on FotD might well be Fear is the Key, which is the third-proggiest song there. Wasting Love is solid, but it would be toward the bottom of most of their other albums. And yes, yes, Judas Be My Guide is a good song, but it's not THAT good. A lot of the rest of this is songs that have a section or two that I enjoy, but don't coalesce into something that I want to go back to.
Listening to this album in the context of a discography run really gives me the feeling that, yes, there badly needed to be a shake-up of some kind at this point. And while I don't have a behind-the-scenes insight into what wasn't working, it's not surprising to me that Bruce is the one who left. The approach he started taking on
No Prayer is bizarre and misses far more often than it hits, but at least it made some sense given the direction of that album. On FotD it comes across as even more bizarre, and I think it's the closest he will probably ever come to delivering a bad performance.
I don't want to take anything away from those who love this album. I wish I could love it, too, and I'm glad y'all get joy from it. But my experience is mainly frustration. Which is not really the case with any other Maiden album, even
No Prayer for the Dying.
Topic: The Iron Maiden Thread v. The Merge of Souls (Read 573349 times)
