Album review: Iron Maiden, 'The Book of Souls'

Album review: Iron Maiden, The Book of Souls
Boston Globe
September 4, 2015

Another one from last Friday…this actually shared a page with my Scorpions feature story, which made for a rather interesting impression on folks who mostly knew me for my work in The New York Times, which was about 99.99999995 percent about classical/concert music.

@nightafternight reviews Maiden in the Globe. This completes me, somehow. http://t.co/MaoF2iw9oT

— Owen Weaver (@owenHweaver) September 4, 2015

Which tells me something that I already knew about the sub-optimal circulation achieved by the Time Out New York website during the decade-plus that I wrote about metal there on a regular basis. Interviews with Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath), Scott Ian (Anthrax), Barney Greenway (Napalm Death), Frank Mullen (Suffocation), Randy Blythe (Lamb of God), Carley Coma (Candiria), and plenty more… it's as if they never happened.

Penetration makes all the difference. What a metal-worthy observation.

Anyway, at roughly 195 words my review of the amazing new Iron Maiden double set – a deluxe-edition copy of which I allowed myself the pleasure of purchasing with cash currency at a brick-and-mortar store today – really only scratches the surface. At that length, all you really hope to do is attract attention and pique interest enough to encourage a reader to investigate further.

If I'd had a few more lines, I like to think I would have written that the album sort of feels like two regular-length albums; that it's superbly paced and agreeably produced; that certain motifs here strongly recall specific songs from the initial albums Iron Maiden made with Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith back on board, Brave New World and Dance of Death, quite strongly; and that The Book of Souls, for its girth, is a more consistently strong album than its two worthy studio predecessors, A Matter of Life and Death and The Final Frontier.

Since I did not write any of that, I'll recommend strongly that you read the detailed, insightful, and convincing examination and analysis that Adrien Begrand wrote for PopMatters.

Next year's world tour can't come soon enough.

Original Content: Album review: Iron Maiden, 'The Book of Souls'