IRON MAIDEN — Virtual XI (review)

IRON MAIDEN — Virtual XI album cover Album · 1998 · Heavy Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
Pekka
Iron Maiden's popularity was at all time low during the late 90s following the loss of Bruce Dickinson and the acquisition of Blaze Bayley. Lots of fans jumped ship, but the band soldiered on like nothing happened. The X Factor was a difficult album born in a difficult time, and after the troubles had been overcome, Maiden continued in a more classic vein with a reasonably sized eight song album with highs, lows, fasts and slows.

Virtual XI has a couple of flaws, including the hideous album cover, a bit overlong repetition in a couple of songs, a rather hollow sound and very restrained playing by Nicko McBrain, but luckily the song material is strong enough to make up for most of it. Without an intro, without a drum fill or anything the band jumps right into Futureal, a fast opener of a very rare kind - a Maiden song lasting under three minutes. This track is a polar opposite to Sign of the Cross opening the previous album, and the next song polarizes opinions very strongly, the emphasis being on the negative side. Spiced with a rather silly synth sound, The Angel and the Gambler is a ten minute track made of five minutes of material. "Don't you think I'm a savior, don't you think I can save you, don't you think I can save your life" is a line repeated over and over and over and over and over yet again, but quite recently I've started to see that it's not necessarily boring, it's growing. Despite the seemingly endless repetition the music under it moves forward all the time. It could do it faster, but I'm developing a liking to this song to my big surprise.

Lightning Strikes Twice, When Two Worlds Collide and The Educated Fool are very solid material all of them, the first two featuring rare writing contributions from Dave Murray, and The Clansman is a classic Blaze era epic which they had the sense of keeping in the setlist when Bruce came back. Don't Look to the Eyes of the Stranger is the other track of the album which gets much flak for the repetition of its title, but in this case too it can be seen as boring or growing. In my opinion this song has a great, long build-up, but what it builds up to I'm not quite sure of. A furious melody to a hilarious "humppa" style beat (check Wikipedia if the word is weird) is quite a combination, and I haven't been able to decide yet during all these years if it's a bad part or a good part. Memorable at least. And as the Blaze era began with a masterpiece, it also ends with a masterpiece called Como Estais Amigos, a very emotional song about the men who fought in the Falklands conflict, Blaze giving a great performance and the band playing some brilliant melodies and solos in the instrumental section.

A grossly underrated album of high quality material, though with a few flaws. Recommended to open minded listeners.
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