Iron Maiden
The Book of Souls

What does the "book of souls" hold?

The Book of Souls is an epic, primitive, dark album, full of apocalyptic visions and metaphors about death. However, this tale of decay (first that of the era, then of man) never appears in a purely poignant form, because the solemnity of the instruments and the powerful voice of Dickinson spread a thin veil over the drama of the lyrics, to emphasize the pride and heroism of the various characters that inhabit the songs, to whom Bruce lends his voice, thus branching into the dual role of lyrical actor and modern prophet of misfortunes.

Given the ancestral and cursed smell that often pervades this hour and a half of music, it seems natural to think that the sound cannot be perfectly clear. Therefore, the live recording is well accepted, as is the way the sounds have been distributed during mixing, as an impeccable production would have partly frozen the emotions offered by this extraordinary work.

The sonic foundation of the album is that of post-2000 Maiden, namely long, articulate compositions and that musical philosophy introduced with Dance of Death, then definitively forged by the successor A Matter of Life and Death. This time, however, we are facing something more meticulous, and indeed, it's no coincidence that the specter of the 80s wanders within the tracks, filling them with self-citations (or recycling) that bring back to life the band's golden era, plus a surprise ending that could open new musical horizons for Harris and company.

Who are the chosen ones?

Don't be deceived by the logo on the cover: The Book of Souls is not an album for everyone. In some respects, it is not even an album for pure metalheads, but let's proceed in order.

It will please those who are madly in love with Maiden, it will not please those who hate them unconditionally.

Here, so far, nothing serious to keep in mind: both "camps" are too extreme and are not relevant, because loving or hating a band too much does not provide you the lucidity needed to accurately distinguish its strengths and weaknesses.

It will appeal to universal rockers, it will not appeal to traditionalist metalheads.

Usually, the absolute rock lover appreciates the genre in all its forms; from the most cerebral and complex (progressive, psychedelia) to the more direct and essential (alternative, punk), therefore, they might listen to an album by Rainbow and one by the Ramones within a couple of hours of each other, bearing the sudden change of style without difficulty. This is to say that the universal rocker is an open-minded person who favors sound experimentation, who does not erect barriers on the stylistic evolution of a musical project (provided it's qualitatively valid), who does not prematurely concern themselves with how a record might sound, because they will evaluate it only during the first listen. Thus, analyzing The Book of Souls, the universal rocker will not worry about whether Maiden sound more prog or more "80 style," they will never look at the clock to check the duration of the tracks; they will instead focus on the artistic value of the album, trying to savor its beauty, therefore freeing the mind from any possible fixation.

Obviously, this will not happen with the traditionalists, that is all those metalheads firmly anchored to the eighties. These are lively old men who live by continually listening to old vinyl records and who regularly attend concerts of historic bands, to revisit a mosh or headbanging going on for over thirty years, to the notes of the usual Breaking the Law, Master of Puppets, or (indeed) The Trooper. It should be noted that there are also many young people who follow this mentality; but these are people who discover classic heavy metal in an era subsequent to the release of most important "80s" albums, so their curiosity in knowing the "old glories" (or having discovered them a few years ago) is perfectly understandable. By doing so, however, these young people impose upon themselves the typical limits of the conservative metalhead, thus becoming an integral part of this category of people, that is, those who would hate an album like The Book of Souls, because it neither belongs to nor recites the purely "eighties" metallic formula that it needs to attract their attention.

It will appeal to true musical omnivores, it will not appeal to false musical omnivores.

Literally speaking, the difference seems minimal, in reality, these two groups of listeners have very few points in common. To begin with, the musical omnivore is a true connoisseur who spans many genres and analyzes works with seriousness and criteria. Thinking about this, when this type of listener inserts The Book of Souls into the player, they will basically have the same reaction as the universal rocker mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Quite different is the false musical omnivore, that is the delegate of the most insidious category of listener groups analyzed so far. It is a person who usually claims to listen to "a little bit of everything" even if they actually lack a concrete musical culture. They live, in fact, on top charts and radio singles, so they don't really know how to judge the value of an album, because they are convinced that musical quality is appraised only by the number of copies sold of an album. This is the classic type who puts on Made in Japan just to listen to Smoke on the Water, thereby denying themselves the listening experience of Child in Time or Highway Star. Someone like this might have bought The Book of Souls just for Speed of Light, or simply because they saw the album at the top of the sales charts in Italy. Obviously, these false omnivores cannot really be taken seriously; but it's important to remember that these are the same people who invade the comment sections of online reviews, to tarnish the real value of the album, spouting out fabricated verdicts like: "The album is too long, Maiden are finished, the songs are boring, etc." they indeed dare to trash a work that they have never truly listened to. Unfortunately, they even succeed in making their opinion count. And they do it in the most obnoxious and hypocritical way possible.

At the end of the day, however, it must be remembered that all these assumptions are only meant to offer a partial insight into what the public's reaction to the album will be. Naturally, there will be universal rockers and musical omnivores who will not appreciate the offering from The Book of Souls, but these are rare and individual cases, made invisible by the global picture of the situation, where the aim was only to vaguely segment the audience, in order to understand who the chosen ones for the album's listening were. Should you not recognize yourself in any of the aforementioned categories, the recommendation is to proceed with listening; if instead, you recognize yourself... you have likely already identified your group of belonging.

Let's dispel false myths

Much has been said about The Book of Souls. Setting aside approvals, there have been credible and constructive accusations, but simultaneously many senseless criticisms, not only among opinionists but even in signed writings by professional reviewers. The purpose of this section is to attempt to absolve the most nonsensical insinuations blurted about the album, in order to focus solely on the real merits and flaws of this recorded work.

"The album is too long."

What does "too long" mean? Since when is the quality of a work measured by a stopwatch? And especially why aren't Iron Maiden allowed to offer an album of broad duration? After all, if we tried to look back at the artistic creations of the past, we would encounter a plethora of "bricks" turned into shards of human knowledge. We can think, for example, of The Ring of the Nibelung by Richard Wagner, a tetralogy fifteen hours long (about three and a half hours each part), now considered a heritage of classical music and opera; we can think of War and Peace by Tolstoy (over fourteen hundred pages); we can think of the warlike Apocalypse Now by Coppola (the original film lasted one hundred fifty minutes, while the Redux version has even one hundred ninety-seven); or we can more simply think of the famous The Wall by Pink Floyd, a double album lasting a total of eighty-one minutes (about ten less than The Book of Souls). Four examples, to make you understand how insignificant the criticism of the record in question is. Of course, The Book of Souls is not a masterpiece, especially when compared to the imposing beauty of the aforementioned works. The moral of the story is, indeed, more modest, as well as wonderfully truthful: the quality of a work is not determined by its prolixity.

“The songs are too long”.

Anyone who supports this statement not only has missed much of rock history, thereby denying themselves the listening of tracks like War Pigs or Stairway to Heaven, but also shows they know very little about Maiden's own discography. Now, leaving aside the almost fourteen minutes of Rime of the Ancient Mariner, there is a plethora of "Maiden-esque" suites many of which were composed right in the golden era. This is the case with Caught Somewhere in Time (about seven and a half minutes), or Alexander the Great (eight and a half minutes), or even Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (about ten minutes), not to mention the string of tracks that last between six and seven minutes. True, the albums of the eighties also offered many more "easy" pieces composed of direct riffs and catchy choruses in refrains, but this does not mean that The Book of Souls denies this type of songs: Speed of Light, Death or Glory, and Tears of the Clown are all there to prove (each with its story and atmosphere) that the more spontaneous side of the band has not yet sunk underground. From 2000 onward, Maiden have simply reversed their historic way of composing. Now they primarily write suites; and only occasionally do they let themselves go with some more immediate pieces. Besides, there are always three guitarists to exploit, and long tracks are precisely needed to give the Smith/Murray/Gers trio the proper space to express themselves at best.

“Dickinson is underwhelming.”

Here is another urban legend that deserves outright abolition. Let's start by recalling that the live shows of the latest "Maidenian" tours (viewable online) are a clear testimony of how Bruce is still able to sing the band's old repertoire excellently, and let's continue by affirming that if the singer truly strained on the high notes (as many believe they hear, especially on recent studio tests), on stage he would be left without a voice after performing the first songs. To remove any doubt, just go back and listen again to the Live After Death of 1985, where the same "strain effect" is audible but went unnoticed, probably due to the (then) young age of the singer. Now, however, the same way of singing is seen as a problem caused by Bruce's aged vocal cords, when in reality, there are far more striking cases of singers who have lost their voice. Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, for example, has never had a powerful and resonant timbre, but has always interpreted the songs with a low and nasal voice; nevertheless, he has suffered for many years a notable vocal decline. To realize this, just listen to Living With the Past, a live album from 2002, in which Anderson (at the time fifty-five years old and a little younger than Dickinson today) can be heard straining on many notes, especially during the performance of Aqualung, where some parts come out almost whispered. But the vocal decline has not only involved instinctive and self-taught voices like Anderson's, but also more technical and multi-toned ones, such as that of David Defeis, leader of Virgin Steele, who used to deliver enviable vocal performances live, at least until the late nineties. Today, unfortunately, he is often forced to resort to falsetto, whereas the high notes used to come out always "full voice." All this to say that, on the threshold of sixty, Dickinson is still capable of singing many tracks of his repertoire in the original key, and on The Book of Souls he does not fail to meet expectations, delivering another powerful and resonant performance, as well as extraordinarily theatrical and expressive. Only some vocalizations come out a bit "grated," but it could be something deliberate.

“The album sounds too prog.”

If the supporters of this idea were identifiable only among the "ultra-conservative Maidians," those who stop at 1984, then there would be nothing to say. But the fact is that many people believe that with The Book of Souls, the "Irons" have excessively abused prog influences when they praise a historic masterpiece like Seventh Son of a Seventh Son from 1988, which possesses all the characteristics of progressive music, as it permeates sophisticated compositions, adorned with guitar synths (already introduced with the previous Somewhere in Time, from 1986), and with a touch of neo-classical thanks to the symphonic arrangements that often appear in the background (especially in the title-track). In short, Iron Maiden had already opted for a more refined and intricate sound by the mid-eighties, and after the predominantly hard-rock interlude, audible in the respective No Prayer for the Dying from 1990 and Fear of the Dark from 1992, they returned to more prog oriented experiments, from The X Factor onward, with the monumental Sign of the Cross suite more experimental and innovative than the entire and overly praised Brave New World of 2000, an excellent album but erroneously considered as the pinnacle discography of the new Maiden, when in fact it was just the fusion of the style of The X Factor with the solo Dickinson of The Chemical Wedding (released in 1998). Those who discredit The Book of Souls, excessively praising Brave New World, perhaps forgot that the latter album contained tracks like Blood Brothers, Dream of Mirrors, The Nomad, and The Thin Line Between Love and Hate, which had strong prog tinges, not to mention that the last two were early experiments of what the band would later showcase with the seminal Paschendale from the 2003 album Dance of Death, a song that definitively paved the way towards the compositional philosophy of A Matter of Life and Death of 2006, up to that moment the most prog oriented album signed by Harris and associates. In short, anyone accusing The Book of Souls of sounding too prog is obliged to come to terms with a past where that style remains ingrained among the main "Maidendian" influences but never, however, altering the sonic foundation that has always characterized the band: classic heavy metal.

In search of the truth

Of course, The Book of Souls does not live solely on unfounded accusations, but also on concrete strengths and weaknesses, as per tradition in most of the recorded works. The major weakness of the album (perhaps the only truly significant one) lies in a specific phase of production. We have seen that the way sounds have been equalized might add further charm to the "atmosphere" of the work, however, the studio technicians made a serious mistake in mastering by inserting the single Speed of Light in second position, a track that, besides appearing awkward, continues to manifest its uselessness, especially because it places itself between the evocative mid-tempo of the opener If Eternity Should Fail and the apocalyptic and epic The Great Unknow. Both tracks have a textual connection while Speed of Light proposes a vaguely futuristic hard 'n' heavy with a text extolling cosmic pessimism, a track conceived solely for a live adaptation, but severely disrupting the climate of the pieces that surround it. On The Final Frontier it would have held its own, on The Book of Souls certainly not. A similar discourse applies to Death or Glory: five minutes that take us directly back to the times of Piece of Mind, but it is somewhat manneristic, albeit pleasant listening, while When the Rivers Run Deep could have been the real single of this record, with its irresistible speedy heavy that seems to reference the material of Somewhere in Time (with a few guitar synths fewer).

Thinking instead of the most debatable moment of the album, it becomes inevitable to mention The Red and the Black, which occupies the fourth position of the tracklist, and is the only suite signed by Steve Harris. Certainly an excellent track, but it has its flaws, starting from the naive bass solo (used as intro and outro of the song), with a vaguely dark climate, but soiled by a scale of notes that appears to reproduce a flamenco, while the actual piece reveals very engaging and incisive verses (thanks to the admirable Dickinson), then unfolds in a superb six-minute instrumental where guitars exchange niceties endlessly, in an ecstatic electric tangle, emanating a passion and inspiration not felt in years. Too bad only for a few too many choruses: the usual oh, oh, directed to the average fan; the homework before the interrogation in front of the stage. It would have been smarter not to cram the track with all these vocalizations and let them arise spontaneously in concert (as happened with Fear of the Dark), simply because in this way everything becomes more forced and obsequious. The choruses in the final part of the heroic Shadows in the Valley are much more spot on, which after the solemn and masterful title track (a dark and ancient prophecy of the Mayan civilization), serves as an epilogue to the most archaic and cursed side of the album.

After visiting apocalyptic scenarios and forgotten worlds, here the concept of defeat suddenly changes target: environmental chaos suddenly becomes inner chaos, that of man, his torments, and all the disasters that await him at the gate, through the final triptych that shows the most experimental side of the entire album. Indeed, listening to the initial notes of Tears of the Clown, one immediately notices the abrupt change of atmosphere: a melodic hard rock, short but intense, which bitterly philosophizes on the hidden side of comedy, namely sadness; human affliction hidden behind the goofy mask of a clown. And when the curtain falls, here the pain of this man expands to the rest of the world: Man of Sorrow is a denunciation against the lies with which power tarnishes the existence of all of us. Its musical transposition is without doubt one of the most interesting moments of the album. A decadent and nocturnal opening, then a robust prog-oriented riff, a graceless and whispered bridge, and a recited refrain that seems to liberate a timid glimmer of light amid so much melancholy. The instrumental parts are also beautiful, with guitars crossing in an electro-acoustic tangle in a psychedelic sauce. At this point, when the album seems to have unleashed all its emotional strength, here comes the most sublime moment: Empire of the Clouds reveals Dickinson's love (author of the piece) for Queen and Genesis. It's an eighteen-minute suite which, while retaining the "Maidenian" style, is enriched with prog and neoclassical inserts, never so evident until now; a refined and tragic composition in which Bruce unleashes all his lyrical flair, narrating the air disaster of the dirigible R101, occurred on October 5, 1930. A poetic text and moving music transport the listener in this exhausting journey towards death, a flight marked by the warm voice of Dickinson, never so inspired, maybe because it is indeed the sky to set the background of this tragedy... his sky... the same one he has traveled many times wearing the clothes of a line pilot. The album fades with the notes of the piano and the last stanza marked by the singer's gentle voice, before giving way to a silence that shatters the listener's sensations, leaving them in a state balanced between gratification and sorrow.

Closing the book

We are facing one of the greatest commercial successes of 2015, a product that divided the audience into a thousand different factions. The Book of Souls has initiated an endless, divergent, and disorderly tangle of verdicts, so the final grade had to be thoroughly justified to the readers. From such a reflection arose the exaggerated prolixity of this writing. Then the album will continue to be debated, even after examining it in such an obsessive manner. It is important, however, to clarify that this grade is not meant to praise the band, but the beauty of the album, its surprises, its ability to recycle and innovate at the same time.

Federico “Dragonstar” Passarella