Iron Maiden
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son

THE REVIEW

At the parish oratory, in the early 2000s, the older kids flaunted T-shirts adorned with monsters, electric guitars, and mysterious words that puzzled us younger ones: Iron Maiden, Blind Guardian, Angra, Children of Bodom, Savatage. It was a primordial encounter with music that was a matter of faith, a rite of identity, a clan discipline. A pass that ushered you into adolescence and then into youth, a sort of ID card whose features included the now-familiar Eddie, or the pitch-black hoods of evil priests in mystical robes. Or yet, the necroses of the most horrifying creatures.

If you listened to music that was too pop, or even if there was just a little too much melody amidst the electric guitars, you’d receive the seniors' timely rebukes. So, you accepted the initiation rite, or at least you tried. Metallica, immediate love (and a T-shirt to go with it), Death... not yet, I'm not ready. Iron? Of course. Even the girls listened to Iron Maiden and you’d hear them talking on the dusty soccer fields about how beautiful Dream of Mirrors was. Those a few years older insisted on the latest album, Rock in Rio. It was an omnipresent topic, along with feminine charms, and somehow you had to speak that language to be taken seriously.

These sociological elements also fit into the trajectories of how my love for music was born. Soon abandoned, those dictates somehow return here and there in my personal journey. I loved Metallica with my own, individual feeling, partly because they were opposed by the predominant group up at the parish. Their strongest faith was in the Maidens. So, my relationship with Steve Harris's band has always been somewhat dialectical, of love and hate. Even knowing Iron Maiden’s discography by heart didn't make you interesting, because everyone knew it, down to the deepest recesses. In fact, you had to really know all the important lyrics to earn a bit of respect. Life down here is just a strange illusion.

In short, I never really felt they were mine. I know a few albums well, the first and obviously The Number of the Beast, but with that touch of coldness towards the most institutional moments. For me, they sounded a bit banal and light compared to Metallica's sounds. Over time, I've understood the greatness of tracks like Hallowed Be Thy Name, but I've also paused over less popular passages like Remember Tomorrow and generally the albums with Paul Di'Anno. Then, over the years, I've given them more chances, but now not for a sacred fire of passion, only for a taste of philological completeness. I've moderately appreciated the works of their golden age. Without ever being dazzled. Unfortunately, the vast discography doesn’t help, but you explore it piece by piece. Many albums and many tracks with sometimes similar names, and the difficulty of identifying a trajectory of evolution and substantial differences between the various phases of their career, making the listener’s journey a bit more complicated. They’re not easy to approach retrospectively.

Recently, enlightenment. I've simply fallen in love, madly in love with Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. Which I previously knew poorly, through a few tracks listened to on live albums, without fully understanding the peculiar characteristics of the work. Beautiful, and I’m certainly not needed to explain why. Nice compact guitars, solos in abundance, but also expanses colored with synthesizers, melodies that might remind you at times of Queen and, at the same time, some progressive-leaning structures. It hadn’t happened before that I didn’t get bored at all with a Maiden album, I don't feel there are fillers and even the “minor” tracks have a reason in terms of melody, construction of counterpoints. I’m dying for the chart-busting boldness of Can I Play with Madness, the duels and speed of The Evil That Men Do, and shortly after, the maximalism of the title track. The guitars can be alluring, atmospheric, or splendidly rocky. The bass gallops wonderfully, without ever being self-referential. The sound is denser than before, but illuminated in a different way, there’s great clarity even in the complexity of the architectures. The obsession with wanting to constantly come across as grim and gothic is gone. For me, it’s the golden section of their music.

I've been listening to it repeatedly for days; I'm happy to have found a true passion, something I feel is mine, for a band I've always felt was everyone's and therefore nobody’s.