BRAVE NEW WORLD

Like most Maiden fans, I was first exposed to the band through their ''hits'' ''Run to the Hills'' and ''Number of the Beast''. But as for the first album in whole that I listened to, logically I started with...BRAVE NEW WORLD. Surprised? Me too, considering how well these songs are played.

I'm glad Iron Maiden can still rock out as many of the shorter songs like ''The Wicker Man'' and ''The Fallen Angel'' can attest to. There are a few longer tracks that veer in the prog direction; all I can say is that they're decent prog compositions at best, but they run too long for me and suffer from hokey concepts. ''The Nomad'' is the best of these outfits IMO. There are even a few songs here like the title track and ''Ghost of the Navigator'' that don't do anything for me at all.

Bottom line: this is very good hard rock with only a few hints of prog rock. All musicians play well here and Bruce Dickinson can still hit the high notes just fine, but in the scope of progressive rock, this is somewhat marginal.