Bruce Dickinson
The Chemical Wedding
[CMC/BMG]
Iron Maiden, when they were actually *worth* something, were
a great traditional heavy metal band - of course, this is all
very easy to forget with them releasing abortion after abortion
during most of the 90s. I personally gave up on Maiden fairly
early in the game - "Powerslave" was the last album I really
appreciated from them, and "Somewhere in Time" was so fucking
horrid, I was left with nothing to do except proclaimed "Maiden
is dead" and walk away (although "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son"
*did* have a few good tracks, it was marred by such vomitus songs
as "Can I play with Madness" - a complete choad). Bruce Dickinson's
early solo material didn't fare much better either (anyone remember
"Tattooed Millionaire" ? Yet another fecal deposit in the anal bank
of metal), and so for me, the legacy of Iron Maiden died in 1985.
Imagine my surprise when a friend of mine brought over the "Accident of Birth" LP from a couple of years ago. Sure, I had read all the "rave" reviews (from countless unreliable mainstream metal magazines), but I expected the worst anyways...of course, I was wrong. "Accident of Birth" was actually a fairly decent album - sure, it wasn't "Killers", but it wasn't "Fear of the Dark" either. The only problem I really had with it was the (over)use of down tuned guitars (leave that sort of thing to the doom and stoner bands, not traditional metal). So based on the strength of AoB, I picked up "The Chemical Wedding", fingers crossed and hoping for the best...it was a good gamble, as "The Chemical Wedding" is easily the best traditional metal album to come out in the last decade. Bruce's voice hasn't sounded this solid since "Piece of Mind", and the song writing is superb. There aren't as many maidenesque moments as on AoB (don't expect twin-guitar melody attacks here), but don't let that detract you. A fair chunk of the material is slower paced, and falls into the "epic" category, with each song being built upon long unwinding passages leading into each other, constantly building momentum (which isn't to say the album doesn't have its harder moments - it does, in spades). I'm hard pressed to find fault with this release, especially considering that we're dealing with a genre of metal which has pretty much exhausted all its possibilities - the fact that Dickinson (and company) have produced something that sounds this vital and fresh is a minor miracle. "The Chemical Wedding" is a great album, managing to avoid the two major pitfalls it could have stumbled into : sounding too "modern" in approach (alienating the older fanbase), or suffering from the "same old same old" syndrome so many 80s metal giants have fallen into. Kudos to Dickinson - let's hope he can keep cranking out such classy metal into the 21st century (and lets also hope the recently announced returning of him & Adrian back into the Iron Maiden camp produces something this brilliant, instead of dragging him down into the pit of mediocrity that Maiden has dwelled in for quite a while now)...
© 1999 chorazaim
Imagine my surprise when a friend of mine brought over the "Accident of Birth" LP from a couple of years ago. Sure, I had read all the "rave" reviews (from countless unreliable mainstream metal magazines), but I expected the worst anyways...of course, I was wrong. "Accident of Birth" was actually a fairly decent album - sure, it wasn't "Killers", but it wasn't "Fear of the Dark" either. The only problem I really had with it was the (over)use of down tuned guitars (leave that sort of thing to the doom and stoner bands, not traditional metal). So based on the strength of AoB, I picked up "The Chemical Wedding", fingers crossed and hoping for the best...it was a good gamble, as "The Chemical Wedding" is easily the best traditional metal album to come out in the last decade. Bruce's voice hasn't sounded this solid since "Piece of Mind", and the song writing is superb. There aren't as many maidenesque moments as on AoB (don't expect twin-guitar melody attacks here), but don't let that detract you. A fair chunk of the material is slower paced, and falls into the "epic" category, with each song being built upon long unwinding passages leading into each other, constantly building momentum (which isn't to say the album doesn't have its harder moments - it does, in spades). I'm hard pressed to find fault with this release, especially considering that we're dealing with a genre of metal which has pretty much exhausted all its possibilities - the fact that Dickinson (and company) have produced something that sounds this vital and fresh is a minor miracle. "The Chemical Wedding" is a great album, managing to avoid the two major pitfalls it could have stumbled into : sounding too "modern" in approach (alienating the older fanbase), or suffering from the "same old same old" syndrome so many 80s metal giants have fallen into. Kudos to Dickinson - let's hope he can keep cranking out such classy metal into the 21st century (and lets also hope the recently announced returning of him & Adrian back into the Iron Maiden camp produces something this brilliant, instead of dragging him down into the pit of mediocrity that Maiden has dwelled in for quite a while now)...
© 1999 chorazaim