FEAR OF THE DARK

FOTD marks a good improvement over the No Prayer disaster. It's a more polished album, featuring lots of ballads, attempts at blues-rock and plenty of AOR next to their usual arena metal. So its bad reception shouldn't be a surprise really. Maiden had become a prisoner of a fanbase that wouldn't welcome any change at all and that wouldn't applaud again till Bruce rejoined Maiden in the 00's and completely gave up trying anything they hadn't done before.

Now that doesn't make FOTD into a good album, but it's decent enough and on a similar (low) level with 7th Son. It lacks epic qualities but on the other hand, the commercial tendencies that got in the way of enjoying 7th Son are at least done much more professionally now. The lesson learned being: if you're going to do AOR, at least do it competently. Especially the ballads are quite pleasant.

It's nothing that justifies rounding up the 2.5 stars though.