The Final Frontier
Iron Maiden is getting more grandiose as the years go by.
The Final Frontier - By Iron Maiden
Comfortably one of the biggest bands in the world, and certainly the biggest to be named after an 18th Century torture device, Iron Maiden only seem to get more grandiose as the years roll by.
Last year's Flight 666 documentary captured them touring the world on a jumbo jet piloted by singer Bruce Dickinson and playing to crowds of up to 100,000, their famous twin-guitar attack now featuring three lead guitarists, essentially because they can.
The Final Frontier, the heavy-metal warlords' first album in four years, is the CD equivalent of Maiden's epic touring exploits. Five songs clock in at more than eight minutes each, and if the whole record was much longer, it wouldn't fit on one disc.
As for the songs, they are Iron Maiden but more so: indefatigable, hard-riffing epics about dying planets and the like, pounding along on Steve Harris's bass and Dickinson's manly bellow. It's much-beloved heroic nonsense, with relentless spirit and ambition.
