Iron Maiden
Dance Of Death

THE REVIEW

Before praising or denouncing the latest episode of the "Iron Virgin" saga, it would be appropriate to digress on why many bands with a legendary past, after a period of time calculable by summing up the mortgage payments of a villa, reunite: the outcome of such reunions, as can be expected, is not always artistically promising, but this doesn't seem to concern Iron Maiden.
Honestly, our mental faculties are not yet so dimmed as to demand another masterpiece like "The Number of the Beast," given that in the last decade the band's productions have always ranged between mediocre and decent. However, we do not wish to bore you further, dear listeners, certain and confident that Mr. Harris and company have always maintained a solid bond founded on mutual respect and love for musical exploration, even at the risk of displeasing the most devoted fans.

The album opens on a low note with "Wildest Dreams," which from the very first lines earns the golden tapir as the worst Maiden song: written based on the more successful "The Wicker Man," the aforementioned track tries to recapture the raw spontaneity of their early days, drawing upon episodes like "Moonchild" or "The Ides of March," maintaining the structure but softening its impact.
The title track follows, a dark chant with fairy-tale accents that a stern Dickinson interprets with a sinister class: the initial riff is enriched by a simple yet effective orchestral interlude that, for once, deviates from the usual solo/chorus solution typical of the latest Maiden productions.
In many episodes of the album, the increasingly evident dominance of the epic tones that marked the success of the previous "Brave New World" can be noted, particularly with the lofty "Montsegur." Also, "Paschendale," one of the most impactful tracks on the album, follows this trend, but the grandiloquent trend seems restrained by the now omnipresent mannerisms of the English combo. This artificial sound recycling is followed by "Age of Innocence," a simple filler that in the eighties would not have found space in a publication except as a B-side.
"No More Lies" and "Face in the Sand" confirm the increasingly worrying tendency of Iron Maiden to exploit the harmonic structures that made them great to exhaustion: both songs seem written in the vein of a "Fear of the Dark" or a less popular "Mother Russia," where, as per contract, after the traditional arpeggiated intro, comes a predictable crescendo accelerating on which Dickinson sings of historically themed horrors dear to the "Maiden style."
The widespread sense of tedium and haunting repetitiveness is momentarily forgotten at the close with "Journeyman," the first and so far only fully acoustic track by the group that reveals an unprecedented and surprising component of the group's sound tapestry.
Supported by a grandiose string arrangement, the song reveals a melodic vein and an unexpected versatility, lifting the album's fortunes at the close, leaving hope for future evolutions of the group's sound.

In conclusion, we cannot judge "Dance of Death" a bad album, since, however disappointing, even the less inspired Maiden have the cunning to land the winning blow. After all, we are in the presence of a band that made heavy metal great, therefore the album in question could easily be defined as "boring but with class", a work created by old glories who now create music with the same emotional drive with which an employee punches a time clock.
We are thus certain that "Dance of Death" will not disappoint the younger and more naive fans of Iron Maiden, nor will it alienate the more nostalgic ones, qualifying as an episode of pure craftsmanship, increasingly distant from the masterpieces that made Iron Maiden great. A demonstration of the fact that in certain contexts even repetitiveness can become a reassuring certainty.