IRON MAIDEN for sure is a band of superlatives. Looking back on a more than 35 years spanning career IRON MAIDEN is one of the biggest, commercially successful, most influencing and most defining metal bands in this world. Almost unbowed over all these decades.
Now they have unleashed their fifteenth album entitled The Final Frontier and again they break all records, at least, when it comes to album charts positions in the media. In over 20 countries The Final Frontier has entered the pole position. IRON MAIDEN is like a mass hysteria causing drug everybody needs to grab ;)
As for The Final Frontier I cannot share this overwhelming euphoria. This record is a good one, yes, but for sure not that kind of genre-defining milestone.
Most of all the tracks on The Final Frontier are epic. And with these overlengths the band runs the risk of being lengthy and not varied enough. None of these ten tracks get straightway stuck in your ears or even emerges as a hymn. It rather needs a couple of runs to get full access to this album. On The Final Frontier IRON MAIDEN try to strike a new path with a more progressive approach, in an unobtrusive way without being too tricky and complex at first go. But the Brits are still lacking of the right balance between heaviness, power and smartly complex structures. Isle Of Avalon and Starblind stand out a little in this matter; El Dorado offers great bass lines, while The Alchemist is one of the snappier ones. The title-track is pretty lame but at least owns a recognizable and catchy refrain, which should work fine during the band’s upcoming live shows.
The production of an IRON MAIDEN album is always a topic for excellent discussions. The current one is better than others we had in the past but personally I’m not satisfied. On the other hand, this kind of washy sound meanwhile became a trademark and I guess fans would miss something special if they would get a different production. We got used to it ;)