Iron Maiden: The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg

Iron Maiden is the best heavy metal band. Don’t try to argue the point, just accept it. I got into Iron Maiden when I was 10 or so years old after seeing the Be Quick Or Be Dead music video clip from the then-new Fear Of The Dark album. I’ve loved them ever since and am immensely happy to have seen them live on five occasions on two tours.

I’ve always said that Iron Maiden were at their best whenever it was that you discovered Iron Maiden. Ask any two Iron Maiden fans what their favourite album is, and you’ll rarely get the same answer. If two fans do happen to nominate as their favourite the same item from the Iron Maiden discography, it’s unlikely they’ll name the same favourite Iron Maiden song.

THE TWO BEST IRON MAIDEN ALBUMS

My personal favourite Iron Maiden album is Fear Of The Dark because that’s what got me into them at the time. Iron Maiden’s commercial (and critical) success was starting to wane at the time, as was singer Bruce Dickinson’s enthusiasm. Consequently, my second-favourite Iron Maiden album is The X-Factor, the first of the two much-maligned *shock gasp* Blaze Bayley-era-vocals Iron Maiden albums. In the three years that passed between Fear Of The Dark and The X-Factor I grew to love everything there was about Iron Maiden. When you’re a young teenager, three years seems like an eternity, so when The X-Factor finally came out after many delays I just couldn’t get enough of it. I distinctly recall dubbing the album to tape from my grandfather’s CD player (I got my own boombox a year later) and pretty much destroyed the cassette from repeated listens.

So those are in my personal view the two best Iron Maiden albums. As stated, everyone’s opinion will differ. And for that same reason, I also have my least favourite (“least best?”) album by Iron Maiden: A Matter Of Life And Death.

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

The band’s fourteenth album, A Matter Of Life And Death is also the third “second coming” album for Bruce Dickinson. He re-enlisted for vocal duties on 1999’s Brave New World album, as did guitarist Adrian Smith, providing Iron Maiden with no less than three guitarists and a bass.

A Matter Of Life And Death was critically acclaimed upon its release in 2006… and yet it’s the only Maiden album I can’t get into, try as I might.

I still don’t know what it is… Bruce’s not-quite-air-raid-anymore vocals? The fact that the album was intentionally not mastered? I really don’t know, but it’s worth noting that A Matter Of Life And Death is regarded in some circles as the band’s most self-indulgent album. This is evident by the fact that during the A Matter Of Life And Death tour they played the album in its entirety, with only a handful of anthems played towards the end of each show. While Iron Maiden deserve full credit for doing something genuinely different, both on record and live, an act such as this was, once could argue, noodly self-indulgence — and unsurprisingly, the track selection for the tour upset loads of fans.

My copy of this single from the best heavy metal band came from the best record shop in Australia. 

THE REINCARNATION OF BENJAMIN BREEG

To close, the artwork above is for The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg, the lead single from A Matter Of Life And Death. As with the rest of the tracks from this album, there’s just something about it that I find very difficult to get into compared to every other Iron Maiden album. The intro feels a bit weak, Bruce’s voice doesn’t seem to hit the mark and, while it breaks my heart saying this, there’s not much to it that I find overly memorable, other than perhaps the main riff. On the other hand, if that’s Iron Maiden’s worst, then I can happily live with that. It all gets back to that whole expectations thing. The inclusion of Hallowed Be They Name (Radio 1 ‘Legends’ Session), a classic track from the The Number Of The Beast album, is a nice touch in that it’s still a live rendition of a track but not one played to an arena.

Iron Maiden have been around for 30 years. They’ve released 15 studio albums, have three live guitarists and a bass player, and have performed more than 2000 live shows. Every time a reference is made to their estimated 85 million record sales, we are inevitably reminded that this extraordinary fact has been achieved with relatively minimal commercial airplay and exposure. When you’re that damn good, rock n’ roll lore allows you to have that one excessively self-indulgent album — the operative word here is “one” here. Just don’t disappear up your own arses by doing it on every one of your last five albums, like our friends Manowar have been known to do

Ultimately I tip my hat to Iron Maiden for not sticking to the formula. Which is exactly why Iron Maiden is the best heavy metal band around, no matter when or how old you were when you really got into them.

Alternative albums

This photo is not recent. It’s actually from last year, not long after I’d acquired another stash of alternative album CDsfrom JB Hi Fi. This lot is from the greatest record store on earth (that I’ve been to anyway), HeartlandRecords, and was purchased entirely with record store vouchers that given to me by my family.

Underground albums. Well, most of them. Since taking this shot I think I've almost
figured out how to take pics without excessive flash reflection.

 Despite being several months old, I still haven’t managed to properly listen to the lot. I’m yet to open one item from this list while with the others I’m still “familiarising” myself — as one does with new music — before I can genuinely decide if it’s good, bad, ok, a grower, an instant hit, or “where has it been all my life”.

Funnily enough, the process of getting to know new music is literally something that can be quantified — in my case, I do this by checking the stats on my Last.fm account (feel free to say g’day and add me). That’s because when buying a CD, the first thing I normally do is copy it to my media library. Not only does it satisfy my inner obsessive-compulsive, it has also resulted in me becoming really “consistent” if not downright uptight about my music listening. For example, I can’t bear having a song not play through in its entirety and thereby not registering as a full scrobble on my listening stats. This probably explains the funny looks I get from my fiancée whenever I get home from work, pull into the garage, and then take forever to get out of the car as I wait for the last minute of the song to play through its last 40 seconds.

Anyway, when I got these CDs, my plan was to compile reasonably detailed impressions and thoughts on every one of them. Naturally, so far I’ve managed to do that for all of one of these releases. So here’s the CliffNotes version.

Nattefrost: Blood & Vomit

Dirty, filthy, somewhat juvenile and silly but nonetheless still-nasty black metal. Contains “that” infamous recording of Roger Nattefrost throwing up. And another one of him taking a leak. The track is subtly titled Nattefrost Takes a Piss.

True story.

Dead Kennedys: Give Me Convenience OR Give Me Death

Best of compilation for this revered and highly influential punk outfit. Like so many people I love Holiday In Cambodia and California Über Alles. However, I’m still getting my head around the rest of it. Would a better understanding of the socio-political context of the time help?

Iron Maiden: The Wicker Man

Iron Maiden is the greatest band there ever was. No don’t argue the point. Brave New World, the album from which this single is taken, isn’t quite my favourite Maiden release, but meh, I dig the b-sides, especially Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson singing the Blaze Bayley-era track Man On The Edge (Iron Maiden vocalist who lasted two albums). Like a true Iron Maiden nerd, I trainspotted how in the live version he changes the line “A briefcase, a lunch and a man on the edge / Each step gets closer to losing his head” to “Each step gets closer to losing his hair”. Yeah, no one else noticed either.

32Crash: Y2112Y

A quirky, covering-all-bases kind of electronic project that tries to sound like a bit of everything. Front 242 vocalist Jean-Luc De Meyer and members of Implant (EBM industrial kind of guys) are behind this project which has a lyrical theme based entirely on science-fiction. I loved the previous album in the 32Crash discography, Weird News From An Uncertain Future but this one doesn’t seem to have the same creative spark and richness. Shame really. Maybe it’ll grow on me with more listens?

Iron Maiden: The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg

I told you I was a Maiden fan. Why else would I buy an out-of-print single from my least favourite (you mean least awesome) Maiden album?

Wumpscut: Dried Blood Of Gomorrha (technically it should be “:Wumpscut:” with two very industrial colons, but then that would mean it would be expressed as “:Wumpscut::” which looks totally wrong)

Classic German ’90s electro industrial. This was a case of an artist doing more with less, in that this release had a lot going for it despite what sounds like a limited amount of gear and technology to work with. Hard to believe that Mr. Wumpscut, Rudy Ratzinger, transmogrified into a slick merchandise and album factory, releasing a new and generally mediocre full-length studio album every year since 2004, while perpetually repackaging special limited ultra hero imprint deluxe hand farted re-re-re-presses with one super extra special bonus track from a broken demo tape he found under his pillow.

Fear Factory: Resurrection

I totally managed to actually blog about this one. Click on Fear Factory right here.

Hocico: Dog Eat Dog

Stompin’ Mexican electro industrial mayhem, this was the lead single off Hocico’s 2010 album, Tiempos DeFuria. This song embodies everything that Hocio does best: mediocre production; unimaginable darkness and vitriol; unintentionally funny lyrics; and general all-round pounding ass kicking. The title track and b-side are good but the remaining remixes were all a bit too similar to the original. Hey, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Gothic Compilation Part 56

These budget compilations from Germany embody value for money. You usually get two discs, with one side tending to be more gothic and guitar-based, while the other is electronic and industrial. They’re a great snapshot of what happens to be “in” at the time in the alternative music mothership that is Germany. Heartland Records had half a dozen or so of these to choose from so I ended up picking one with a music video bonus disc (there’s a Shiv-R music video on there, so I thought I’d give it a crack…). Turns out there’s also a prolonged gothic fashion shoot video on the same disc, which I have absolutely no interest in.

Soulfly: 3

Ex-Sepultura vocalist Max Cavalera’s Soulfly project got played an awful lot on heavy metal radio stations I listened to so much when I was younger, but I never really followed through. I recognise some of the tunes off this one but it seems like a mixed bag. Interesting fact: Soulfly were only accepted onto MetalArchives in 2012… because their eighth album was finally deemed to be metal enough. Talk about picky…

Hocico: Wrack And Ruin

Like the previously mentioned Dog Eat Dog lyrics, so too does this Hocico album’s title make zero sense. But that’s ok because it’s a killer album. It always amazes me how these two butt-ugly angry Mexicans can create sounds that, well, sound so evil and sinister. Maybe living in Mexico does that to you? This album also contains one of my favourite EBM-electro-industrial tunes of all time: Born To Be Hated (Original Odium). Well, the first half of this song anyway.

Venom: At War With Satan

I’m getting towards the end of this list and my fingers are getting tired from typing. So I’m going to quote a relevant Facebook post instead: “I got At War With Satan and bonus tracks, mostly because of all the hype and “special” mentions it gets. I can appreciate its historical significance but geez, it certainly hasn’t aged well. And that’s me being diplomatic about it.”

A friend who also happens to be a big Venom fan offered this insight: “I've always thought the problem with At War with Stan was that they wanted so badly to make an epic album — a legacy (it was too soon after Black Metal for them to realise they actually already had). So they put so many good ideas and riffs into one song that didn't quite come off as well as it deserved [the main track going for just under 20 minutes]. Consequently, they had nothing left for the second side of the album and were rushed to write filler. They were on the road all the time at that point. Had it come out a year later, it may have blended well with some of the more atmospheric and energetic tracks of Possessed which came just the following year — and again had so much filler.”

This didn’t stop the album from influencing thousands of skinny Norwegians. Like Nattefrost and pals.

Lacuna Coil: Our Truth

Two-track single for a band I’ve heard so much about but never really checked out properly. I suspect this release is not indicative of their sound.

The Baroness And Love Lies Bleeding: Dark Beauty

This was the first “true” electronic gothy industrially album I ever bought (well, except for one of those countless suspect Cleopatra Records “A tribute to” compilations). The Baroness was (is she still going?) a Melbourne-based performer and (I think) was also involved in promoting the infamous and now defunct Abyss nightclub. While this album does contains some fantastically cheesy darkwave, this was the album that got me into the whole darker side of electronic music. Specifically, the track, Dark Beauty (actually not a bad track if you like electro gothish darkwave) , which got played on a late-night community radio show.

I used to own my own copy of Dark Beauty but a former girlfriend never returned it (along with a whole bunch of other stuff). So I finally shelled out $10 to relive the whole thing all over again.

“That probably deserves some kind of public service award…”

I’m a big fan of legitimate free music downloads, if only because I’m probably one of four people in the whole southern hemisphere who hasn’t used a torrent or P2P service for the last seven years.

It’s not what almost everybody else I know does (and I’ll confess that over the years I’ve spent a tear-inducing amount of money on music that may not always have been up to scratch), but like almost everyone else I also still have my shame pile of unlistened to music. That's because I occasionally go through spates of looking for new music by hunting for free downloads provided by bands, which means I end up with a pile of MP3s in a forgotten folder on my desktop.

One such small collection of tunes that my computer tells me has been on my desktop since January 6, 2012, consists of three free tracks from American electronic goths The Crüxshadows. Founded in 1993, they’re not a band I know much about and I guess they play what would pass for the equivalent of modern darkwave.

 Serious business.

To start, I only owned three tracks from various compilations so when they released three free Christmas tracks (go HERE and download them from the right hand column) it doubled the length of my Crüxshadows playlist.

It got me thinking about this band, and made me realise that there are a couple of things I really like about them, even though I don’t know their music anywhere near well enough to consider myself a fan.

First, from what little I know, they seem to have some variety going for them. Yes, it’s that electronically driven synthy darkwave sound that has been done a trillion times before, but they also seem to make use of some cool sounds. They use ‘real’ violins during their recordings and main (male) vocalist Rogue seems to have a fantastic, almost operatically clean voice. The track Citadel (from a Fiend Magazine sampler) is a good example in my view of a track that uses what could be an old-school synth, or at least a modern one that sounds pretty retro.

Secondly, I like that they have dancers. This makes sense in the live setting given that a major component of the music is electronic (it’s hard to jump around on stage holding a big synth), and for all the pretentiousness — be it the umlaut, the main-man’s pseudonym, or the fact that they’re successful goths — I’d like to think this adds something to their shows, in the same way that The Prodigy’s human stage presence was basically made by two guys who couldn’t sing.

The fact that they’re not-at-all-unpleasant-to-look-at dancers certainly helps, as does the fact that they thankfully seem to have a sense of humour (below).

The above video from an Ayria show (another superb electronic artist who is very underrated, plus she’s from Canada so that has to make her 50% better to start) has the dancers bust out of nowhere and do a full routine.
Check out their mad moving skillz.

The third and by far my most favourite thing I love about this band which, as I said, I really don’t know very much else about, is the fact that once upon a time, back in the United States of America in 2006, for one very brief moment in time they did the unthinkable and managed a number one Billboard single with the track Sophia.

I own the (radio edit version) of this track and I really didn’t think that much of it. Yet that's merely a matter or personal taste and I throw my hat in the air for these guys — an independent band that was virtually unknown by the standards of the commercial music industry — for managing to outdo corporate-backed mega artists.

Never mind the fact that it was a short-lived blip, or that it didn’t break their career and propel The Crüxshadows into mega stardom… for one fleeting moment back then and now forever frozen in time, a song by a bunch of mopey-looking people with funny hair wearing corsets and fishnets was officially at number one — and in September 2006 this meant it outranked P. Diddy.

Take that P Diddy.

To quote Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson, when the Bring Your Daughter… To The Slaughter single did much the same after sitting for one week (and one week only) on top of the UK singles charts, where it consequently knocked Cliff Richard off his perch: “That probably deserves some kind of public service award.”