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
4/5 ·
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No Prayer for the Dying is the eight album by UK heavy metal band Iron Maiden. It is the first to feature guitarist Janick Gers, who replaces Adrian Smith. After the heavily progressive Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, No Prayer for the Dying comes across as something of basics to basics album, featuring shorter songs (only one is over five minutes), and a generally more hard rocking feel to all the material rather than the varied approach to the band’s other releases. Possibly because of that No Prayer for the Dying is one of the lesser appreciated albums within the Iron Maiden discography. Unjustly so, in my opinion.

Although the lengthy penned by Steve Harris epic track that most prior Iron Maiden albums have (besides Killers) is absent on No Prayer for the Dying, I don’t actually see an awful lot wrong with this album. I like the fact that it sits as almost a reactionary release to the progressively inclined material of Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. This is an Iron Maiden focusing on being metal, and they do that pretty well on this release as far as I’m concerned. I miss the epic as many of anyone possibly could, and overall this isn’t my favourite Iron Maiden release by many miles, quite the contrary it sits for me as the start of a dip in quality of the band’s material that lasted throughout their 90’s output, though it is one of the better 90’s Maiden releases, only topped for me by 1995’s The X Factor.

I think a lot of the tracks here are great and underrated rockers, especially the likes of Holy Smoke, No Prayer for the Dying, The Assassin, Run Silent Run Deep and Mother Russia. The title track, which is one of the more laid back pieces on the album, is complete brilliance while Holy Smoke always manages to bring a smile to my face. Funnily enough the one song everyone seems to know from this album, namely Bring Your Daughter...To the Slaughter, is actually one of the album’s weaker songs as far as I’m concerned.

No Prayer for the Dying is admittedly a step down from the gems that Maiden had given to the world previously, but it is in no way a bad album – it’s just different. Not so much in the way that it’s completely new territory for them, because it really isn’t, but because it goes completely against the direction that the band seemed to have been moving it even as early as Powerslave. One of the few Iron Maiden albums that needs a bit more time to get into than others, but I don’t see any good reason for the negativity surrounding it. Not a masterpiece for certain but in a discography that is as strong as the Iron Maiden discography, surely the odd ‘just solid’ album doesn't warrant ‘raving jackal mode’?

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven, scored at 7.6/10)
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