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McDeth
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Yea, Bruce Dickenson kicks sufficient amounts of ass. All though I did not care for Dance of Death that much, I am hoping that this album will own synonymously.
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Beer? I'm down.
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Phoenix
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Dance of Death has some good songs on it, but I think Brave New World was a better album overall. I still haven't seen anything that tops The Chemical Wedding though.
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I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
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Phoenix
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So I've listened to it. What do I think? Overall it's excellent. Anyone expecting it to be a repeat of "The Chemical Wedding" needs to think twice though. It goes in an entirely new direction. Bruce's vocals sound fantastic as always, but the guitar style varies a lot from song to song. Some of the lyrics may seem a bit weak if you just read the inlay card, but when set to music there's a tremendous difference. I still don't know how he manages to do that, but the vocals and music add an enormous amount of depth to what would seem to be lackluster lyrics.
Song-by-song opinions:
Mars Within - intro track, not much to say really. It's kind of like Toltec 7 Arrival in that it leads up to Abduction.
Abduction - Probably the best track on the album. This is classic Bruce. Chemical Wedding fans will like the style on this one. Fast pace and heavy riffs dominate it, the lyrical progression is superb and well defined.
Soul Intruders - it's as heavy as Abduction, starts fast, but has an overall slower feel. The chorus line is very operatic. Not my favorite song on the album, but one of the better ones and I do like it.
Kill Devil Hill - Has an eerie disturbing air to it. I do not like the chorus on this one very much as it tends to be quite repetitive and there's very little rhyming. The guitar work on the chorus is fine, as is the melody, but I just don't like hearing "Kill Devil Hill" repeated 15 times. I think this one could have done with some better lyrics there. It really detracts from the song.
Navigate the Seas of the Sun - very accoustic, if you have the "Best of Bruce" 2-disk album, it kind of reminds me of Re-Entry, and has a Skunkworks-era feel to it. The song is very repetitive, but the lyrical rhythm is better than Kill Devil Hill by a great measure. Very catchy feel to this one. I like it, and for being mostly accoustic it sounds better than The Journeyman.
River of No Return - slow, brooding, with a dark feel to it. Conveys the "doomed" feeling quite well in the sound.
Power of the Sun - I would say this is the weakest song on the album. It tends to run together, and the intro/outtro seem a tad cheesy. I'd say it's this album's "Gates of Tomorrow/New Frontier".
Devil on a Hog - I absolutely love this song. It's the catchiest thing I've heard in a long time, and I have to cackle every time I hear "I've seen your world and I got the shirt" because that sums up my "been there, done that" feeling toward life here quite well. The vocal harmonizing on this song is great. I could listen to it over and over just for that.
Believil - slow and malevolent during most of the lyrics, and gets heavy during the chorus parts. Probably the moodiest one on the album, certainly the slowest of the songs and it's a good lead up to A Tyranny of Souls.
A Tyranny of Souls - if Abduction isn't the best on the album, then this one is. The chorus line is fantastic, the guitar work is excellent. The song manages to be brooding but moves at the same time. Some of the slower guitar work sounds Skunkworks-ish, but it's a hell of a lot heavier overall. The middle section is a bit death-metalish, which was a little surprising, it almost sounds Slayer-ish at that part, but not to an absurd degree.
It's certainly an addictive album, and I like it better overall than Dance of Death, probably not as much as The Chemical Wedding but close. The more I listen to it, the more I like it. If you're a Maiden/Bruce fan, I see no reason not to.
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I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
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