IRON MAIDEN — No Prayer For The Dying (review)

IRON MAIDEN — No Prayer For The Dying album cover Album · 1990 · Heavy Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Pekka
In a way Seventh Son of a Seventh Son was Iron Maiden's ...And Justice for All and No Prayer For the Dying was their Black Album. We'll of course have to exclude the fact that the latter sold millions of units and launched Metallica to international mainstream superstardom, which No Prayer wasn't very close to achieving. But Seventh Son was the album that took the prog Maiden approach to as far as it could go, so the only thing to do next was scale down and return to the rock roots.

But it doesn't always work. Adrian Smith had lost interest in Maiden during the Seventh Tour of the Seventh Tour and quit afterwards to be replaced by Janick Gers, with whom Bruce Dickinson had recorded his first solo album Tattooed Millionaire. Before he went, though, Smith had penned a track that would end up on the new Maiden record, finished by Dickinson. This raunchy rocker called Hooks in You is notable only for containing a mention of a certain apartment "number 22", we all know who lives there, and is among my very least favourite Maiden tracks ever, so perhaps it was good time for Smith to step out. It's just too bad that the band lost Smith's melodic solo style for Gers' sometimes very messy one, but it actually suits the material here quite well.

No Prayer is an odd Maiden album in that it contains no killer tracks. All their other albums, however weak as a whole, always had at least one total masterpiece, but everything here ranges from forgettable to decent to just very very good. Maiden had indeed changed big time, gone were the synths, intricate istrumental passages and epicness and in place was a considerably more rocking feel and very raw vocals by Bruce. The melodies were mostly still there, thankfully. The opener Tail Gunner is a sort of a follow up to Aces High and with its riffs manages to convey a good feel of aerial battle, and Holy Smoke is a very good aggressive-but-light rocker with a good delivery from Bruce against evil televangelists. The more ballady title track has a great melody, but they would take a very similar melody to much higher heights on their next album. The only track that resembles their recent output is the closer Mother Russia. For this song they bring back the keys, and the intstrumental section resembles a sort of a Seventh Son-lite. Some really good guitar harmonies in the beginning and an unusually slow stomping rhythm help make this an album highlight, but on any preceding album it would have been among the weakest.

If you're just starting to get to know Maiden, save this one for last. If you end up buying all their stuff you'll probably find this one quite enjoyable as well. It is, but infinitely inferior to anything they released after Killers. Deserves the occasional spin.
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