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Iron Maiden - Brave New World CD (album) cover

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Iron Maiden

 

Prog Related

3.97 | 617 ratings

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toroddfuglesteg
4 stars Back to form again !

After the two albums with Blaze Bailey, both Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith returned on this album and Iron Maiden was back to the good old days. But even they did not believe that this reunion would herald their best period ever. The trilogy of albums starting with this album took Iron Maiden to new heights and their most commercially successful period ever. The year before the release of this album, a despondent Iron Maiden was playing the medium size clubs. Two years later, they did Rock In Rio for tens of thousands of exctatic fans. I return to Iron Maiden's fanbase again after the superb Rock In Rio live album. I gather I was not the only one who returned to Iron Maiden on the basis of that live album..

That live album was based on many of the songs from this album. On the basis of that, I ran to my local record shop and purchased this album. I had realistic hopes, but they were surpassed by one of Iron Maiden's true great albums.

I am used to the straight-in-your-face opening track from Iron Maiden. This is their standard formula and The Wicker Man does not deviate from that formula. A good song, but I have now learnt that track two is normally a cracker on every Iron Maiden album. Yes, Iron Maiden delivers the goods with Ghost of the Navigator. I now notice that the average track lenght is over five minutes. My suspicions about Iron Maiden turning away from street metal (the utter horrible No Prayer For The Dying album) and more over to prog rock seems to be right. The title track also confirms that impression. A truly great Iron Maiden track which I already knew from the Rock In Rio album. Ditto with the next track Blood Brothers. It is over seven minutes long and it seems like Iron Maiden has been listening to both GENESIS and PINK FLOYD. Which is great in my book. The next track The Mercenary is a typical Iron Maiden track and nothing special. It is solid handycraft. The next track Dream of Mirrors clocks in at over nine minutes and opens pretty bombastic before it quiten down to one of Iron Maiden's pieces of pure genious art. The tune is infectious and impossible to get out of my head. Iron Maiden goes symphonic prog. The next track The Fallen Angel is a rather short one and pretty heavy. It is a good track, but nothing more than that. The following track The Nomad clocks in at over nine minutes and has a lot of eastern/middle east feel to it. It is a diversion from the normal Iron Maiden formula..... and a successful one too. I get the feeling that the new Iron Maiden is not here to just sort out their pension fund. This is not a safe track and it takes some time to really get it. I like it, but it is not one of their better tracks. It still gets both thumbs up from me. But it is a very strange track.... The next track Out of the Silent Planet was released as a single. It is an OK track, but perhaps the weakest track on this album. The closing track is the over eight minutes long The Thin Line Between Love & Hate. This is not a great track by any means. It is also an unusual Iron Maiden track. It feels more like a Bruce Dickinson solo album track. It is still a good track, though.

You still gets the superb heavy guitar runs, the great vocals and the thundering bass on this album. The trademark Iron Maiden sound, in other words. But Brave New World and the two following albums also brings in new ideas from the symphonic prog scene. H***, Iron Maiden has actually become a better band on this album ! This is one of Iron Maiden's true great albums and the start of a trilogy of albums which took the band to new heights. Brave New World foretold what was coming our way.

4 stars.

toroddfuglesteg | 4/5 |

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