The Iron Maiden appreciation thread (metal, genre, albums, title)

[Trollheart]

Originally Posted by The Batlord

No question: Brave New World. Their last two with Bruce before he left were cool, but nothing special as far as Maiden are concerned; I've never had any interest in listening to the Blaze Bayley albums past the first few minutes of The X Factor, I mean, say what you want, but at least Ripper's albums with Priest were worth either liking or hating; but their last three albums have been sweet though. Brave New World, however, is one of the best albums of their career. Easily their best since Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, and possibly better. Definitely one of their top three albums (along with Seventh Son and Powerslave). "Wicker Man", "Ghost of Navigator", ""Brave New World", "Blood Brothers", "The Mercenary", I mean, ****, I was just trying to list highlights and ended up giving the first five songs on the album.

I love how it captures that galloping energy that Maiden perfected, but also shows off that more mature, almost progressive maturity that they started to introduce with Somewhere In Time, and only really nailed with Seventh Son. It might actually have the most staying power of any of their albums because of it, so there may come a day when it's my favorite Maiden album. In fact, the only knock I have against it is that Bruce's voice isn't quite what it was, but that's still relative.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. BNW was the rebirth of Maiden, though some of the later albums went a little ... bloated? But then, I haven't listened to them all that much so I can't really make a judgement on them. But BNW: superb album, from start to finish. Not one bad track on it. And as Batty says, after the wilderness years with Blaze, it was like the sun after the rain.