This is the thread where we talk about Iron Maiden!!

Agree 100%. And the fact that they continue to absolutely destroy live is amazing to me. I've never gone home from a concert happier than the nights I saw Iron Maiden.

yeah same

that was my first thought: new single = new album = new tour weeee 😃

I don't think that's been confirmed yet. In trying to figure this out, I discovered that "Belshazzar's feast" is the name sometimes used for the Bible story that gave us the phrase "the writing on the wall". So it may just be something they were using to tease the new single.

thanks! i just saw that name popping up too, so I assumed that to be the name of the first single before today. waiting until i can hear this on something other than shitty laptop speakers, but def excited for more new Maiden! \m/

It's a perfectly fine middle-of-Side-One Iron Maiden song, but a leadoff single? Nah. Iron Maiden used to write fast songs; they need to get back to that.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Thursday, July 15, 2021 1:39 PM bookmarkflaglink

this is how I feel tbh. not so much about the tempo, as some of my favorite tunes on Book of Souls (which I loved) were mid-tempo, but this doesn't feel like a leadoff single to me.

if I heard it in the middle of the album, I'd like it just fine.

Agree 100%. And the fact that they continue to absolutely destroy live is amazing to me. I've never gone home from a concert happier than the nights I saw Iron Maiden.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Thursday, July 15, 2021 1:45 PM bookmarkflaglink

I genuinely got chills when I saw them in Tampa two years ago, because the lights were as such where the crowd became mega visible, and you could see the 21,000 seat arena was fucking FULL and screaming their heads off. 20,000+ people to see Iron Maiden, in the 21st century. Priest, on the other hand, who are also still going strong, are mostly doing Hard Rock Lives and things with much smaller capacities (though I'm guessing in Europe they draw bigger).

by comparison, I saw Slayer's last arena tour, and, not gonna lie, the attendance was pretty dope, but....the arena was not filled. there were empties.

(it was an awesome show/tour, and Slayer's popularity was probably as high as it had been in 20 years, but you could tell that an arena tour was a little lofty in 2019 for Slayer, as opposed to 1991)

they are ok.

great post

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJkYGNiBkso

steeeerike two

I recently saw a clip of Brexiter Bruce complaining about all the ways Brexit has made things harder for him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lku0bf3grts

hey mods uhhh

those are kinda fun tbh

tho actually (unintentionally?) make a great case for Maiden's songcraft and ability to write indelible guitar melodies

so the whole Belshazzar's Feast thing was a red herring? anyway, who cares, new album imminent. cover art is badass. up the irons! \m/

https://www.ironmaiden.com/media/images/teddy.jpg

1. Senjutsu (Smith/Harris) 8:20
2. Stratego (Gers/Harris) 4:59
3. The Writing On The Wall (Smith/Dickinson) 6:13
4. Lost In A Lost World (Harris) 9:31
5. Days Of Future Past (Smith/Dickinson) 4:03
6. The Time Machine (Gers/Harris) 7:09
7. Darkest Hour (Smith/Dickinson) 7:20
8. Death Of The Celts (Harris) 10:20
9. The Parchment (Harris) 12:39
10. Hell On Earth (Harris) 11:19

lol at 3 10+ minute songs

i hope this is as ridiculously OTT as Book of Souls, which I loved

same. i have no problem with current era epic length Maiden songs.

Book of Souls material went over really well live too. in fact that fuckin' tour was maybe my favorite, though the last one was great too.

I'm not sure what I expected from an Iron Maiden song in 2021 but I didn't expect most of it to sound like country to me

sounded more like ZZ Top-influenced Maiden to my ears. this is the type of song that woulda fit in the middle section of The Final Frontier I think.

weird choice for a lead single unless the whole album is like this.

Kinda wish these recent album cover art efforts didn't just have a black background behind Eddie, though. You need some sort of insane landscape or towering monument or something.

True.

Eddie in Las Vegas playing craps

but I didn't expect most of it to sound like country to me

Maybe I need to start listening to country radio more often if this is what it sounds like now!

Eddie in Las Vegas playing craps

Somewhere On The Strip

Yeah hold on if country radio 2021 is essentially Iron Maiden then what a world we live in.

I planned out a Maiden jukebox musical last year when there was nothing better to do, it involved a young tearaway called Eddie ("Running Free") being falsely accused of murdering a sex worker (guess) and executed ("Hallowed Be Thy Name"), then being struck by lightning or somesuch and, as the zombified Eddie, falling through time ("Somewhere in Time") to various historical periods (plenty of material there) before going to Hell and killing Satan ("Number of the Beast"). Then returning as the Phantom of the Opera or whatever.
I mean I'd go and see it.

the evil that men do
goes on in Nashville

hahaha dude put that sucker up xpost

I think you just outlined what would have happened if Steve Harris was mysteriously replaced by Jim Steinman.

I'd Be Caught Anywhere in Time (But I Won't Go There)

"Don't be sad
Two minutes to midnight
Ain't bad."

Ned otm re the cover

the new album cover kinda gives me, dare I say it, ‘X Factor’ vibes *shudder*

This is kind of... "stoner"?

I like it more than anything on Book Of Souls already.

their album covers kinda suck now

lol I was wondering and I didn't know the breakup with Derek Riggs was so spicy

For the album] “Somewhere In Time”: ‘We want a science fiction city. A bit like Blade Runner.’ Cause they just steal things out of films, that’s all they do,” Riggs said. “I was with them one time and we were walking around a bookshop somewhere, and they were looking at the book covers saying ‘Oh, we can have Eddie doing this, and Eddie doing that.’ starling ideas instead of trying something original. I just had enough of it. They run around making out like ‘they’re all our ideas.” but no, the ideas that they give me are stolen from other places. But I did the best I could to try to make them original and to inject some life into them.

“You know, Steve Harris’s idea was he wanted to link Eddie to his favorite football team [American soccer],” he said. “It’s like, you’ve got a legendary rock ‘n’ roll icon, and it’s the best selling icon there’s ever been in rock and roll and you want to tag it onto the ass-end of some f**king second-rate football team. From then on I just kind of lost interest: ‘If you want to do it, you f**king do it. Let’s see what you’ve got.’ And what they had was nothing.”

Adding to the discord between Riggs and the Maiden camp was the tremendous popularity of Riggs’ art work.

“The album covers – my work – was getting more attention than the music, and it upset their (the band’s) ego,” Riggs said. “So they were going around the world telling everybody that it was all their ideas and I was just a dumb monkey that painted it all. So this didn’t go down very well. And then they said to me. ‘Well, when are you going to come out with a good idea, because they’re all our ideas,’ and I was like “Oh, are they all your ideas? Then you tell me what to paint and I’ll paint it.” ’cause if you’re working real f**king hard to make these ideas, to make them continuous and make them cohesive the way they were – but then some f**king jackass can turn around and say something like that, it’s a real f**king slap in the face. It gets real old really f**king quick. So, from then on my attitude was like, ‘You tell me what to paint and I’ll paint it, because I’m obviously not getting credit for thinking of these ideas.’

When it comes to the latter day cover art nothing can beat Dance of Death for time and place cheese. On the flip side, I appreciated the perfect pulp of The Final Frontier.

Anyway I'm rereading the songtitles from this new one and it seems like they should have already used about half of those already, I'm mildly surprised they hadn't!

i wish they would just back up the money truck & make up with Riggs already, his covers were so fucking awesome

he sounds like kind of a dick too though?
which with bruce in the band already kind of explains the parting of ways a little too

also maybd ease up on harry & westham united mate jfc

I like the stripped-down covers, including this one. Striking as hell, which is what you want in a great LP cover. The track is pretty great to be honest. I was blindsided by Smith's spaghetti western rock riff but the thing has grown on me mightily over the last five days. I loved Book of Souls, so my expectations for this one are high.

As for the Belshazzar's feast thing, I'm pretty sure it was just a sneaky gag. The Belshazzar story is the origin of the "writing on the wall" idiom, which happens to be the title of the first single. My guess, anyway!

I like the stripped-down covers, including this one.

U fiend

hates fun, clearly

It's been all downhill since Powerslave, cover-wise, though A Matter of Life and Death was a nice recovery.

Ha, I spent too many hours examining every centimetre of Maiden covers and posters in the '80s! Maybe the spartan look appeals to the 50 year-old me.

But seriously, as far as "menace" goes, this is the most menacing cover since Killers. Less cartoony, more direct.

Riggs did all the singles covers too, of which there were many - including Sanctuary, which caused great controversy at the time as the woman Eddie was hacking to death looked exactly like Margaret Thatcher. Bet Harris is a Tory nowadays mind.

https://www.ironmaiden-bg.com/web/images/stories/single02_sanctuary_a_small.jpg

Some of the descriptions here are amusing

https://1000logos.net/iron-maiden-logo/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpuwr9fF7kw

I like it.

good chorus, nice gallops, good riffs/instrumental breaks, but not a lot of fat.