A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

The journey has been quite long since their first and excellent "Iron Maiden" album (1980). IMHHO, the band never released a poor album, even if "No Prayer For The Dying" was probably their weakest one (two stars).

As during all their albums, prog will be hard to find. All tracks are seriously metal oriented here, but we all know that it was their style and nothing else, right?

And when one listens to "Brighter Than A Thousand Suns" there is absolutely nothing than an reinforcement of this FACT. But while the band was rather creative during his long numbers (epics?), I have to say that this one only sits shy to the great "Rime Of The Ancient Mariner", "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son" or even "Alexander The Great" to name a few. A good number with some great guitar moments, but no more.

The Oriental mood during "The Pilgrim" is rather unexpected and brings this otherwise average song to a stronger level. But the middle part of this album is a little weaker. The archetype of the heavy metal genre is featured during "The Longest Day". The ballad "Out Of The Shadows" sounding as a poor AOR tune out of the eighties. Strange because the band didn't fall into this trap very often in their long career.

I can't really say that this is a great album. Even "Dance Of Death" (their previous album) was better IMO. "A Matter Of Life And Death" holds nothing else than average numbers. Over-extended and somewhat useless, unfortunately ("The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg"). They just sound as an average heavy metal band, and to be honest they were much, much better than that.

The Maiden will try hard to cope with their brilliant past and will deliver more long songs in this album than on any previous album. But long is not always a guarantee of great, even if "For The Greater Good Of God" is another killer song. One of the best of this whole offering (with the opening number).

Almost ten minutes of the most vigorous beat, and the power of those three guitars are quite an experience. They work quite well together but the attempts to a solo are not convincing. But this is probably the problem of this album : no real highlights to be found.

A few good songs, but this is not enough to fill over seventy minutes of music. As such, it is longish, uniform and a bit dull. If you are fully in heavy metal, maybe that you will appreciate this album more than I do.

I'm afraid that two stars is the max I can rate this album. And The Legacy is not good enough to turn it higher.

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