### Iron Maiden: A matter of life and death

#### 08/09/11 || Smalley

Seeing as how the old review for “A matter of life and death” was deleted, how much I love Maiden, and how I had never gotten around to listening to this one, it makes sense that I’d finally give it a shot and share my thoughts. While I have enjoyed some of the material off “Dance of death”, I have still yet to listen to that one in full, so I’ll have to use the excellent “Brave new world”, and the less-than-excellent “The final frontier”, as points of reference when it comes to comparing “matter” to the other Dickinson-reunion records. And right now, based off my first few listens, I’d have to sandwich “matter” firmly in-between those two, not coming close to the heights of BNW, but also not dragging as badly as “frontier” did.

Opener “Different world” is a solid galloper with some nice Maiden-signature synchronized leads and soloing, almost sounding like if the more energetic cuts off “Piece of mind” had been recorded by the older, ’06-era Maiden. It isn’t a great song, and no doubt, won’t be making you forget “The trooper” any time soon, but coming as a throwback to part of the band’s “classic” era, one that was recorded by a bunch of guys all around their 50th B-day, it’s still pretty good. They aren’t reinventing their particular wheel, but they can still pull it off with a pretty nice energy (no different then what Motörhead’s doing now, so you have no excuse for liking one and not the other, but er, I digress…).

“These colours don’t run” then starts off with a soft, soothing intro (kind of like “The loneliness of the long distance runner”) before quickly picking up the pace, and again, while you won’t be playing it back over and over in your head due to the awesomeness, it still satisfies. Extra kudos go to the cool, prog-y bridges and epic, choir-like chanting during the second half. “Brighter than a thousand suns” starts off similarly to “colours” (soft), but soon proves that Maiden can still pack a punch when they want to, with a great, running trade-off between surprisingly heavy, aggressive riffing, and powerful, melodic sections for Bruce to sing along to.

However, the extended, 8+ minute length of “suns” does wear on your patience a little bit; not to imply that the material on it ever stops being good, but if a band wants to make an almost-9 minute epic, it’d be nice if they waited until they had some great material to share, that’s all. It’s a fairly accurate summary of the rest of “matter”, come to think about it; there are plenty of solid tracks left, with enough energy, proggy sections, & ideas to prove Maiden isn’t getting bored in their older age (though they still aren’t quite as compelling as they were in the good ‘ol days), but the overall impact is still slightly mitigated by how over-ambitious some of the tracks are.

Besides that, Bruce all-around here doesn’t sound quite as good as I had hoped for, some of the production on the guitar work has this weak, brittle edge to it, and there are a few disappointing cuts, but still, I can take the bad with the good, considering how solid most of the basic songwriting remains.

So, “A matter…” isn’t a revolutionary album, won’t get you into Maiden if you never liked them in the first place, and won’t stay stuck in your head like a truly great album will, but while it’s playing, it’s still nothing but enjoyable, for the most part. And even though most of the material here is solid-at-best, there are a few great moments, giving me hope that Maiden could some day make a record as awesome as “Brave new world” was again. Considering how low they sunk in the 90’s, and how badly some of their peer bands are currently floundering, I think we should all be grateful for this. I sure as hell know I am, at least.

- Information
- Released: 2006
- Label: EMI
- Website: www.ironmaiden.com
- Band
- Bruce Dickinson: vocals
- Dave Murray: guitars
- Adrian Smith: guitars
- Janick Gers: guitars
- Steve Harris: bass
- Nicko McBrain: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Different World
- 02. These Colours Don’t Run
- 03. Brighter Than A Thousand Suns
- 04. The Pilgrim
- 05. The Longest Day
- 06. Out Of The Shadows
- 07. The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg
- 08. For The Greater Good Of God
- 09. Lord Of Light
- 10. The Legacy