BRAVE NEW WORLD

Brave New World marks the return of vocalist Bruce Dickinson and guiatrist Adrian Smith to Iron Maiden. The lads in the band were nice enough to not sack Adrian's replacement, Janick Gers. After all, Janick had been with the band for a decade. Thus, Iron Maiden managed to return to the classic lineup and yet morph into the Lynrd Skynyrd of metal, with three of the top guitarists in metal in one non shred band. Maiden fans as well as fans of metal in general were salivating at the prospects of the reenergized band. The result was Brave New World, a step in the right direction away from the previous Blaze Bayley albums as well as No Prayer and Fear of the Dark.

The album opens with The Wicker Man, the most rocking Maiden tune since Aces High. Bruce's voice isn't the piercing siren it once was, but I defend his "matured" vocals; they still get you pumping like few singers can. Riff-heavy and straight-foward, but great. This is the most straight-forward song on the album. BNW is Maiden's most proggy album to date, even more so than the synth-in-metal experiment gone great 7th Son.

Songs like Blood Brothers and Flight of the Navigator have twists and turns plus synths, the chirf two ingredients of prog. As thrilled as proggies should be with this album, I feel it lacks some of the fun of earlier works. I believe the reason for this was that the band was trying to make up for lost ground. This is the most serious album in their catalogue. That's certainly not a bad thing, in fact it's pretty positive, but I miss the energy of Powerslave and the fun of NotB. Things would only get better from here with Maiden's next release Dance of Death. Highly recommended to Maiden fans and even to newcomers.

Grade: C++