Okay, so I've heard it now. Competent but definitely won't be remembered as their best, simply because of the lack of immediately catchy material. It's even kind of irritating - on almost every other song they're trying to do "Fear Of The Dark" all over again with the big atmosphere-building clean guitar intros. Fine for one song but jesus it feels like they waste about 15 minutes of the album just on intros. I guess this is because Maiden fans expect a certain thing for the body of the song itself, and I think the band, to their credit, are trying to challenge those expectations (in small bursts) while still giving the fans (largely) what they want. The soundtrack-like album intro, obviously cribbed from a studio fuck-around demo, gives the game away - it's a daring show of cards which reveals that their heart clearly isn't really in "being Iron Maiden" (or at least the Iron Maiden that they feel their fans expect) anymore. Dunno if it works though, mostly it's just kind of predictable. On the plus side, great production, Bruce's vocals sound better than ever with a soft touch developing that I never knew he had, the slower songs are actually good for a change, and the thing even sounds oddly raw in places - timing mistakes left in the final mix and all! The whole thing comes off as a slightly more ponderous almost-prog version of "Brave New World", if that's your bag. Personally I like the more direct, hard-hitting Iron Maiden of the early material but I guess the band feel that they've been there and done that 30 years ago... which is fair enough...
But yeah it's still way better than that piece of shit album from Slash. The man can play guitar but damn he can't write a song to save his life. Even with all the A-list help he gets, there's two (at most) decent songs on that thing. Pretty obvious in retrospect that Izzy was the brains behind G'n'R, no wonder the band went tits-up when he left. As for Ozzy's album, it's okay, decent, listenable... just not great, that's all, I was expecting a little more... I don't know what, but whatever it is there wasn't enough of it. Maybe he needs to lose his remote between the couch cushions a few more times.
