Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not taking the piss. I literally despised this album for many, many years. I'm going to have to set this up a little, but will try not to be to verbose. Also, I didn't compare the quality to FU, but how your
felt about FU was how I
felt about No Prayer (album).
Growing up, neither of my parents were all that in to music, so I just kinda wandered musically, never really finding anything that I could get truly connected to. I had to discover things myself, and ultimately ended up on pop stuff like Wham, Madonna, Culture Club, Cindy Lauper etc... Sure, there were some bouts of Supertramp, Yes, Halen, but only their songs that made it on to top 40 radio in the early/mid 80s. So, in 1986, when I did finally start to 'get' in to rock, it was thru an introduction to Led Zeppelin. That led me down a path of hard/classic/glam rock exploration. A couple of years later, I started exploring some mainstream metal bands, with Maiden being my gateway. 7th Son was the active release at the time (it had just been released), so I grabbed it, along with the rest of the 80s/Bruce catalog. Couldn't get enough of it. Then, in '90 when NPftD comes out, I'm in the record store on release day to buy it. My anticipation was high. Drop the disc in, and fire it up full blast (no one else was home). And ...
The opening riff of Tailgunner just felt so flat and deflating and lifeless. There's nothing 'clean' about the production the way that SiT and 7th Son were - to me it's like those two were vibrant and colourful, where NPftD is black-and-white. Bruce sounds like he mailed it in - there's very little variation to his delivery, and hardly any range in the vocal melodies. The lyrics were so bland and pedestrian - this coming from a 19 year old jingle.boy! Holy Smoke and Hooks in You sound like they're trying to be a commercial rock band. Most of these feel like plodders .. songs they're just trying to start and finish. Fates Warning... that song could've/should've had a few more minutes to it. I mean, it ends literally 18 seconds after the guitar solos. The Assassin and Mother Russia sound contain elements and melodies that are simply rehashing 7th Son (song) ... with a little Phantom of the Opera riff thrown in for good measure in The Assassin. Bring Your Daughter - same, but stealing from Can I Play With Madness (a song universally disliked - but ironically one that I love).
After coming off of the run of 5 albums from NotB to SSoaSS, this was so disappointing. There was virtually no originality to it - 1/2 the songs feel like they're demos of the songs that didn't make the cut for 7th Son. And this album suffered from far too many repetitive chorus'. That's not to say that there weren't any in the 5 previous albums, but where they show up, the rest of the song and lyrics more than compensated it. Here, it just feels lazy - and for me, is something that still plagues far too many of their chorus'. The backing vocals sound like they woke up hungover, lit up a smoke, and laid them down in the final 15 minutes that they had the studio booked for. Everything that I loved about Maiden up to this point, well... none of it was here on this album.
Now, I just spun it, and it's not as bad to me now as it was 30 years ago. So, while I definitely felt about it the way you felt about FU - AT THE TIME - I guess the more apt comparison now would be FII; there's more than a few songs (or portions of songs) to like, but there's just as much that I don't like. I'll say this, the most interesting parts of most songs were the solos. It's still an album I can't ever see myself reaching for when I'm in the mood for some Maiden.
You've got what ... 4 songs so far in this list from this album? That is absolutely shocking to me.
I need to get to the meat of your list so that I can cleanse my ears.
I'm on To Tame A Land right now....