Iron Maiden's Reviews
Piece Of Mind (Average Rating: 9.24 out of 10)
My First Taste of Iron Maiden (Rated this album with 10 out of 10)
Reviewed by
IAF_67
from USA
When my friend recommended Iron Maiden to me, I was a little skeptical. For some reason I had viewed Iron Maiden, before actually listening to it, as some sort of death metal band. Maybe I envisioned that because they like to put zombies/demons/whatever on the front of their albums. This was a case where I definitely made a mistake in judging the CD by its cover. When I first listened to it, I wasn't that impressed. Sure, I liked the beginning of "Still Life", but after the first 2:44 it went downhill...or so I thought at the time. In truth, I just didn't listen to it enough to really appreciate the amazing guitar work. However, I can honestly say that I am not a big fan of Bruce Dickinson's vocals...it's not that they don't sound well with the music, it's just that I don't like that high pitched type voice (you see, I'm used to listening to James Hetfield of Metallica). Nevertheless, I didn't feel that not liking the vocals affected my enjoyment of this CD too much. There were several songs where I DID enjoy the lyrics as well as the guitar work. I'd have to say that my favorite song on this CD is "To Tame A Land". It really demonstrates the right way to have a song over seven minutes that is interesting the entire time. The guitar work in that song is so varied that you often times forget you're still on the same song. I made that mistake the first few times I was listening to the song...I started falling asleep and then woke and thought that the CD started over again, but then I realized my CD player doesn't do that, and I was like, "What the...?", and then it dawned on me that I was still listening to the same song. It really is that varied.
Another of my favorites was "Flight of the Icarus". This was one of the few songs on this CD where I thought the vocals were absolutely astounding. I love midway through the song, when the lyrics start, "Just a babe in a black abyss/No reason for a place like this". That may be the best part of any song on the entire CD. There were, however, a few songs I didn't care for. Number one on that list was "Quest for Fire". How can you take any song seriously that starts off with "In a time when dinosaurs walked the Earth"? I like songs that actually mean something to me, or can express in song what I feel emotionally. I don't think there is an emotion that would correspond with that.
The other song I didn't care for was "Sun and Steel". There really wasn't any one reason that I would pinpoint for not liking that song, it just didn't appeal to me. Maybe it's because, again, I couldn't really relate with things like "You killed your first man at 13", etc. It might also have been because I don't like hearing two or three voices singing at once, to me that sounds like I'm at my sisters middle school chorus concert, espcially when they are as high pitched as those in this band. Overall though, I really liked this CD. It was definitely worth my money, and it also gave me something new to listen to now that I've heard every Metallica album. The friend that recommended this to me said he thought it was their best album. I can't be the judge of that since this is the only one that I've heard, but I can honestly say that this is one of the best albums I have heard in a long time, and I'm definitely going to be purchasing more Iron Maiden in the near future!
Buy this album on Amazon at $16.98
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