Speaking of Bruce being so respectful of Maiden during this time, I always wondered if he was having a but of a stab at them in Machine Men with the line 'Iron bites the dust.' Doesnt seem like him though.
Funny thing - in the english language we all shorten Iron Maiden to Maiden, but the way the italian language is structured, it comes easier to shorten it to Iron. We italian people often casually talk about the band as "Iron", so in the italian language that line stands out even more.
But of course, in the same song he says "Iron in the soul" so it was a sign of the reunion to come
About the album - of course it's a damn masterpiece, his best solo album, that eclipses even some of the Maiden albums, and one of the best heavy metal albums in general.
I remember hearing it, I wasn't even prepared for it! at first maybe I almost didn't love it 'cause I just wasn't ready for such an heavy, dark and uncompromising effort.
All the songs are wonderful and memorable, the heavy tracks are, well, heavy (detuning done right and not for the sake of being heavy and noisy) and the mellower pieces are otherwordly in their beauty. To have on the same album stuff like King in Crimson and Jerusalem and make them feel part of a cohesive piece of work is gorgeous. Everything works on this album, if I really have to choose a lesser track, it might be Killing Floor, but even that is good. And the lyrics are top notch.
Allow me to quote, about the magnificent closer, The Alchemist, this interview from back in the day:
Terrorizer: The lyrics on your past two albums seem less personal than those on 'Balls to Picasso' and 'Skunkworks'. More like stories.
Bruce: I don't think that when you make lytrics into stories you necessarily make them less personal. In many ways the lyrics on 'Chemical Wedding', while they're not obviously personal, still have a very personal element to them. 'The Alchemist', for example, is about the physical process of alchemy, but where I associated with it was when I started thinking about Blake in the chorus and put words into the mouth of the alchemist. I tried to think of him more as an artist than some miserable old chemist. This idea that he had this single-minded devotion to something and that he actually didn't care about the rotten world that he lived in. The whole point of the songs is that he's throwing everything back in the face of the world. He's got his experiments, he's got his quest, he's got this devotion to light and the truth, and whenever people try and do shitty things to him, he's just like, 'Oh, you're so small and what I'm trying to do is so big. You don't even know it and I don't even care!' I just love that attitude because it's so strong.
Awesome attitude from Bruce, I didn't quote further but he agreed with the interviewer that this kind of attitude is also his own.
Speaking about The Alchemist - the climax of the song was meant to be a standalone piece, but Bruce felt it was too good to be just a closing piece to a song, and so he turned it into the title track.
A personal, sad story about the record - 1998 was a time in which the internet was not so spread yet, and therefore I didn't have a proper and full internet access. So, sadly, I missed news of both the concert, and of a signing session at a store - I went there the day later and the owner gave this sad boy that missed his hero a leftover posted signed by Bruce, it was the album cover and I still have it in my room to this day. I don't consider however to really have Bruce's autograph - sure, his sign is on the poster, but I wasn't there when he was signing it so it's not the complete experience. Still, it's a memento of how it's good to have the internet
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