IRON MAIDEN — No Prayer For The Dying (review)

IRON MAIDEN — No Prayer For The Dying album cover

Album · 1990 · Heavy Metal

3/5 · 2010-09-26
friso

Iron Maiden - No Prayer fot he Dying (1990)

I never understood the No Payer boycot of both fans and on the community here. This is the Iron Maiden album with some of their most interesting material. No Prayer For The Dying, Public Enema Number One, Fates Warning,The Assassin and Mother Russia are really great songs with lots of progressive influences. Somehow the album is overshadowed by it's great predecessor Seventh Son. On this album tried to get back to it's early sound, something I never understood. In the middle of the eigthies when prog was curseword Iron Maiden goes prog, in the beginning of the nineties when prog became accepted again Maiden leaves prog. This is a puzzling strategy.

The problem of this album is ofcourse the relative big amount of weaker tracks. Though I myself find Tailgunner to be a great song, Holy Smoke, Run Silent Run Deep, Hooks In You and Bring your Daugther to the Slaughter are weak Iron Maiden tracks, though all of them have their moments. Holy Smoke is a commercial rock track, somewhat unsuitable for this band, Runs Silent Run Deep is to simple, Hooks in You is quite acceptable but just not that interesting except for the nice chorus and Bring you Daughter is a commercial disaster. The song was originally written for the Bruce Dicksinson Solo career, but Steve Harrist insisted that the songwriting efforts of Bruce would be used on the new Iron Maiden album. From a point of commerce a good idea, the song became a major hit in England. Still most of it's parts are under the Iron Maiden level of quality, the track has a sort of relaxing vibe.

The good tracks on the album make it still an essential listening for Iron Maiden fans. the title track has a great low volume couplet with great vocals of Bruce, while the refrein is nice and heavy, the solo themes are great. Public Enema Number One was a song that took some time for me to get into. Now I think it might be the best track of the album. The couplet theme is very intelligent, maybe to intelligent, like Iron Maiden tried something completely new. Somehow this song used to make me shiver when I was young. The Assassin shows Iron Maiden going black metal with dark melodies and angry/scared vocals. The refrein theme is a bit strange harmonicly, but I find it to be a good experiment. Mother Russia is the last track of the album and could be seen as an epic. A gothic opening, a traditional balkan sounding couplet and refrein and lot's of solo's and melodies in the end of the track. Still this is not one of the most important Iron Maiden epics, but just good.

Conclusion. An album that had to come for Iron Maiden, they had to make a weaker album sooner or later an this album was bashed as being not as good as other albums. Still I think the critics might have been to hasty with their oppinions. This is an enjoyable metal album that would have made any other metal band famous instantly, but it's just not as great as other Maiden records. Three stars. Maiden fans should never skip on it and metal fans should try.