Yes, the synths are lame as fuck. Yes, the sound is not much better than that of a pre-production demo. Yes, they are rehashing themselves; "The Time Machine"'s lead guitar harmony is identical to the one of "The Edge Of Darkness" and "Death Of The Celts" is revisiting "The Clansman". And yes, the songs are sometimes too long. All that is true.

BUT

The tribal drums of the title track are awesome. The gallop of "Stratego" feels more familiar than home itself. The solos of "The Writing On The Wall" and "Darkest Hour" are breathtaking. Upon my first listen, I was walking alone with my headphones and the vocal harmony at the end of "Lost In A Lost World" almost brought me to tears before the upbeat riff of "Days Of Future Past" made me want to pick up my air guitar as if I were 15 again. No other band can write the epic anthems that are "The Parchment" and "Hell On Earth". No one has ever or will ever sound like Iron Maiden and no one has ever or will ever be as grand as them. Period.

A very dense and someway hard to listen album, but after some spins it grows nicely.

I must confess, I consider there's an excess of slow paced startings for some songs. That increases that density I mentioned earlier.

But anyway, I loved Bruce's performance and that Steve's bass is more listenable (even when he doesn't deliver melodies apart as in Powerslave for example).

For another side: I had a very nice time reading the people's impressions about this album, very diverse each of them but IN EVERY CASE VERY RESPECTFUL

After three full spins it now somewhat settles for me I guess and I am going to put a lower 7 to it.

My bottom line right now is: Had they just cut all the lengthy crab out of it!
And I am thinking of: Cut out completely songs like Stratego, Time Machine and Death of the Celts.
But also shorten immensely songs like the title track (way too long for an opener), Lost in a Lost World, and the Darkest Hour.
The Parchment is alright, quite nice, but also too long. As it is, it doesnt stay with me either.
My favourites would probably be Days of Future Past (now these 4 minutes make up a decent length!) and Hell on Earth (though not as epic for me as for most other users here).

Unfortunately I am not sure right now that I am going to return to any of the songs soon I am afraid.

Written by nikarg on 07.09.2021 at 22:36

No one has ever or will ever sound like Iron Maiden and no one has ever or will ever be as grand as them. Period.

I have to agree about last part but have you hear City Of Golden Gates



I hope its right video, often been deleted, Same that Brazilian band you revived sounds sa

Quote:
BUT

The tribal drums of the title track are awes.........

Everything written after that BUT made me cry. Period.

Written by nikarg on 07.09.2021 at 22:36

The solos of "The Writing On The Wall" and "Darkest Hour" are breathtaking.

The second solo, played, I'm pretty sure, by Adrian Smith, is one of the best constructed IM solos I've heard in a very long time.

Steve Harris is such a frustrating songwriter these days. Out of the four songs he wrote himself, three are filled with B-class riffs, mid-tempo plod, somewhat annoying guitar-vocals unisons, and the odd great melody the song doesn't deserve. And then there's Hell on Earth. While it doesn't really need to be 11 minutes long it might still be the best Iron Maiden song since Brave New World.

As of now I stand by my 5. I think the album both soundwise and songwritingwise is on demo level. All songs have great stuff in them but apart from Stratego and Days of Future Past I think all other songs would have needed more work on structure, flow, cutting out parts and maybe adding of new parts to create more coherent and focused songs. With great production I would have liked it more but it most likely still wouldn't have been a good album, there's just too much half baked here. Hell on Earth is possibly my favourite on the album, along with the other two mentioned.

For me the major blowback in all three latest Maiden records is that they are damn long with too much stuff that don't do it for me. My interest sinks to the bottom about halfways through them. And that's sad, Iron Maiden has always been my number 1 band.

This one's pretty good, I expected worse to be honest.

Really dig this album and I think it's a grower. The more I listen to it the more I like it. From the ROB (return of bruce) era my second favorite after Brave new World. Wasn't expecting something that good!
"Senjutsu": One of my favorite of this album. Nice drumming by Nico and very interesting melody. Epic and heavy
"Stratego": The most "classical IM era" song. I dig this song
"TWOTW": The first single. When it came out I liked it somehow but wasn't crazy about it. It has been growing on me and right now I enjoy it. I think it will be cool when played live
"Lost in a lost world": Another cool song! The intro is slow and atmospheric and then it goes on a heavier pattern. Nice one
"Days of future past": Catchy chorus and Bruce's vocals are amazing !
"The time machine": My least favorite song of the album. Not bad at all but I don't think I will revisit often in the future
"Darkest hour": IM are not that famous for their ballads since they have very few of them. This one is a very strong one with nice lyrics.
"Death of the Celts": This one starts the epic trilogy of Steve's long songs. My expectations were quite high on that one and I was initially a bit disappointed. Right now I dig it and I find it quite nice. But I prefer its cousin, i.e., "The clansman"
"The parchment": My favorite song of the album. Gives me chills every time. The scream of Bruce at the end is amazing. A classic IM song.
"Hell on earth": A very strong song to finish the album.

Overall I prefer this album than Book of Souls. I think it is better when heard as a whole. Up the Irons!

Written by xsim7 on 08.09.2021 at 18:00

I cannot give a review since I am a guest user [...]

Well, in fact you can, the single and temporary obstacle is that guest reviewers must wait 30 days after a release date or 14 days after an official review is published, whichever comes first.

So please don't scrap your idea, it's always great to read a second opinion.

I started really enjoying this album somewhere around my 8th spin. The melodies are catchy, guitarwork stellar and atmospheres can't be confused with any other band.
Pretty obvious that guys got older, Bruce's voice is not as powerful and the mix leaves a lot to be desired (again), but overall I find Senjutsu a major improvement over TBOS.

"Hell On Earth" is one hell (sic!) of a masterpiece.

Written by Bad English on 07.09.2021 at 17:27

more you listen more you like it.

This is best opinion about it. You must really get into it to understand that "Senjutsu" is a very good album.

After the first listen I didn't find anything that remarkable about it, but I admit it does grow on you, it's unlike Maiden of old where the songs were quite short and catchy as hell, with maybe one epic at the end, this takes more time to sink in, all the great melodies and riffs are still there, and athough the songs are a lot longer, the songwriting has matured and is still very good IMO.

I admit they went a bit overboard with the length of some of the instrumentals, and of course Bruce's vocals have declined slightly, but they are still not bad considering his age and all his been through, most vocalists would of retired by his age, or even Died.

My biggest disappointments were the title track, and Days Of Future Past, which I find myself skippable, and Death Of The Celts which seemed to me a part 2 of the Clansmen, but nowhere near as good, not that any of those songs are bad though.

My favourites have to be Hell On Earth which has been a real grower, and the Writing On The Wall because of it's main riff, just a shame about it's chorus, otherwise it could of been a classic, Lost In A Lost World would of been a great song too, if not for the ridiculously long intro, and repetitive chorus at the end.

Oh, this is (suddenly) rated 8.36 right now. Wasnt it around 8.1 only yesterday?
It needs to get cleaned by a lot of 10s I am afraid.
Who is gonna do the dirty work this time...?

Yeah wonder how this went from 8.1 to 8.4 in less than 24 hours?

Written by Nicko's Nose on 10.09.2021 at 02:59

Yeah wonder how this went from 8.1 to 8.4 in less than 24 hours�

It usually happens here as soon as fanboys realize that another album by their favourite band is not up there (anymore) with all the classics in terms of the rating. They are soon gonna open up multiple accounts with the sole purpose of adding another 10 rating to the album -- not all fanboys do that of course, but there seem to be enough doing it with popular bands always. I bet you can program an algorithm doing the account stuff automatically for you, if you can.

I woke up to find that 55 (!) accounts were created from the same IP yesterday just to rate this album with a 10. Instead of getting furious (I had other plans for this morning instead of dealing with a dumb fanboy's account-creating/voting-abuse bender), I made myself coffee, put my newly acquired copy of Will Of The Gods Is Great Power in the cd player and got to work.

All the votes were deleted one by one, all of the accounts faced the same fate, and the IP is permabanned. It took quite a bit of my precious time to deal with this stupidity but at least the soundtrack was superb and there is still almost half of that Scald masterpiece left to play.

The problem with a new user with multiple accounts doing this is that other (often longtime) users give the same album a lower rating than the one they would normally give it to balance the final number. As a result, when all the fake 10s are nuked (and they always do get nuked sooner or later), the album ends up with a lower overall rating than the one it would have had, if a single fanboy hadn't bombed the website with new accounts. It's stupid as fuck but that's what fanboys are - stupid as fuck.

Written by nikarg on 10.09.2021 at 10:42


The problem with a new user with multiple accounts doing this is that other (often longtime) users give the same album a lower rating than the one they would normally give it to balance the final number. As a result, when all the fake 10s are nuked (and they always do get nuked sooner or later), the album ends up with a lower overall rating than the one it would have had, if a single fanboy hadn't bombed the website with new accounts. It's stupid as fuck but that's what fanboys are - stupid as fuck.

Thanks for all the dirty work -- once again.
What you say in the passage I cite is though an assumption you cannot proof, right?

Written by Redel on 10.09.2021 at 11:07

What you say in the passage I cite is though an assumption you cannot proof, right?

If by "proof" you mean "filtering" new accounts and their IPs when they are created, I am not sure that we were doing that up until now. I also don't know what corrupt the magician has in mind for the future now that we are heading towards a whole new era.

Written by nikarg on 10.09.2021 at 11:40

If by "proof" you mean "filtering" new accounts and their IPs when they are created, I am not sure that we were doing that up until now. I also don't know what corrupt the magician has in mind for the future now that we are heading towards a whole new era.

What I meant was you cannot proof that other users are lowering their rates to balance out the vote abuse -- if I understood your hypothesis correctly.

Written by Redel on 10.09.2021 at 11:52

What I meant was you cannot proof that other users are lowering their rates to balance out the vote abuse -- if I understood your hypothesis correctly.

Ah no, we don't do that, at least not systematically. It almost makes sense to give a lower rating though. If, for example, you think the album is a 6 but you see it being ridiculously bombed with 10s in a single day, it wouldn't be so unnatural to vote it with 5, even if you think it is better than that. When these 10s get nuked, the album will end up with a lower overall rating than the one it would have had if it weren't for all the simultaneously manufactured 10s.

Written by Redel on 10.09.2021 at 11:52

What I meant was you cannot proof that other users are lowering their rates to balance out the vote abuse -- if I understood your hypothesis correctly.

To be honest, I can kind of see where Nik is coming from. If I look at how I give scores, I'd say that when I'm for instance on the edge between giving an album a 7 or 8, I tend to look at the overall score. If I think that's way too high, I'll give it the 7, if I think it's close or it's too low, I'll give it the 8. Basically that's how I score for the albums that get a 7.5 from me (in this example).

So I can imagine others will do the same with this one. If they want to give a score of either 7 or 8 and they notice the overall score is at 8.4, they might give it the 7 to work a bit as a counter-balance. That and peope who really dislike (or find it underwhelming) the album, will probably drop it down by one more to balance it out. That last one in my case is just a guess though. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case though.

Written by nikarg on 10.09.2021 at 12:00

Ah no, we don't do that, at least not systematically. It almost makes sense to give a lower rating though. If, for example, you think the album is a 6 but you see it being ridiculously bombed with 10s in a single day, it wouldn't be so unnatural to vote it with 5, even if you think it is better than that. When these 10s get nuked, the album will end up with a lower overall rating than the one it would have had if it weren't for all the simultaneously manufactured 10s.

And you even cannot do it because you cannot look into peoples heads. You dont observe the counterfactual outcome. You just dont know how they would have rated it had there been no vote abuse.
Your reasoning makes absolute sense to me. I just meant to note that it remains a hypothesis that is unproven, without further user surveying, questioning or such techniques.

Written by tominator on 10.09.2021 at 12:09

To be honest, I can kind of see where Nik is coming from. If I look at how I give scores, I'd say that when I'm for instance on the edge between giving an album a 7 or 8, I tend to look at the overall score. If I think that's way too high, I'll give it the 7, if I think it's close or it's too low, I'll give it the 8. Basically that's how I score for the albums that get a 7.5 from me (in this example).

I definitely can imagine there are people doing that. I just hope they are not too many.
But would indeed be interesting to have an estimator for the fraction of ms users that rate in such a way. Maybe worth a poll...

I know this is a thread dedicated to Iron Maiden, so I'll try to keep it short, but maybe my thoughts can make one or two users reconsider their habits a bit, who knows.

To be honest, I usually don't care that much about average ratings, because my tastes are most of the time very different from the average taste. Neither special nor better, just different. I'm much more interested in the ratings of individual users who have similar musical tastes to mine, because that's the only way I can still occasionally find real gems that I would otherwise have missed. I rely on fair ratings from this group of people, because inflated and dishonest ratings are completely useless to me.

However, I guess the average score is a very helpful orientation for many users to separate the wheat from the chaff, and we should therefore do everything to protect the ratings. Not only that, ratings and charts can be fun, too! So anyone who undermines this system, and I think upvotes, downvotes and adjustment votes are almost equally harmful, is simply behaving unfairly towards the community.

Too long, didn't read? Okay, here come the important part.
I think the major part of rating abuse is the result of a gross misunderstanding of what it takes to be a "good fan". It translates well to the sports world, it's only natural that every soccer fan is happy when his favorite club wins and is at the top of the table. But would you, and I am addressing all fanboys and rating abusers now, continue to support your club if it was at the top solely due to cheating, bribery and doping? No? Then cut it out! Because that's what rating abuse is - swindle and deception. And you're not doing your favorite band, Metal Storm, or yourself any favors in the long run by participating in it.

Written by Starvynth on 10.09.2021 at 13:47

But would you, and I am addressing all fanboys and rating abusers now, continue to support your club if it was at the top solely due to cheating, bribery and doping? No?

I am basically with you here in each and every detail. Just one thing: I think the difference for vote abusers from how you describe it could be that for them it is not about winning but more about the truth. I can imagine they often use vote abuse because they truely believe that the album should have an average of 10 because it is a perfect album. And they are willing to do everything needed to make it an average of 10.

Written by Redel on 10.09.2021 at 14:08

I am basically with you here in each and every detail. Just one thing: I think the difference for vote abusers from how you describe it could be that for them it is not about winning but more about the truth. I can imagine they often use vote abuse because they truely believe that the album should have an average of 10 because it is a perfect album. And they are willing to do everything needed to make it an average of 10.

Maybe you're right, but for me it doesn't really matter what people think while they're cheating, because in my opinion, ignorance, stupidity and hybris are no excuse for rating abuse.

I am sure that quite a few RL scammers are convinced that they are doing the right thing when they gain an advantage through fraudulent behavior, but that doesn't make it socially acceptable. Those who try to influence the average rating, for example through multi-accounts, put their own personal opinion above the opinion of the community and undermine the entire system of which they only pretend to be a valuable part. There is no excuse for this behavior, it just shows that some people either do not understand the system or do not really value the community and/or differing opinions.

A dude creating 55 alternate accounts just to get newest Iron Maiden album to #1 of 2021 sounds like a scenario from some fucking sitcom.

Boy, what a great album.