Iron Maiden: No Prayer for the Dying (1990)

I remember being disappointed when I heard Iron Maiden's Fear of the Dark.  Not because I had been a long-time fan and their sound on that album was a departure from what I was used to.  No, Fear of the Dark was actually the first Iron Maiden album I ever heard.  I was familiar with the name, but not the band.  It was considerably lighter than I thought it would be.  Keep in mind that my first exposure to metal was with thrash metal bands like Metallica and Megadeth.  So Iron Maiden's much more melodic take on metal caught me by surprise.  I eventually grew to love the album, songs like "Be Quick or Be Dead", "Judas Be My Guide", and of course the title track are all terrific.  And eventually I started checking out the band's earlier material.  Of course as I did that, my feelings for the first Iron Maiden album I ever heard lessened significantly. 

It took a long time for me to get around to the album immediately preceding Fear of the Dark because it is a generally poorly-received album and because of its proximity to Fear of the Dark.  The other reason is that the big hit from the album is "Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter", which has never been a particular favorite of mine.  In fact, I really do not care for the song much at all.  It is a little too mainstream pop-metal for me.  So it was with trepidation that I finally took the plunge on the album.  I was more concerned with filling holes than really getting into the release.

The album really is not that bad.  I do not think it is as good as Fear of the Dark, and of course it does not even come close to the album that preceded it, the masterpiece Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, arguably Iron Maiden's finest album.  This is quite the letdown from that album.  This album is very much a safe album.  It does not really push anything, the songs are all fine, with the exception of the aforementioned "Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter" and "Hooks in You", which are both pretty terrible.  The problem is that there really is no standout.  As I said, there is just nothing really here that comes close to any of the band's prior legacy.  It is almost like an Iron Maiden tribute band.

The other issue is the lackluster performances by the band members.  Bruce Dickinson, he of the air-raid siren, operatic vocals in the past, just sounds tired and bored.  He is trying some edgier vocals this time around, but there is not a lot of feeling behind them.  Steve Harris, whose bass rhythms have been the primary driving force behind the band, just is not doing anything terribly interesting, and his songwriting suffers as a result.  The guitar solos do not grab the attention of the listener as they have in the past.  The result is an album that sounds sort of rushed and more of a cash-in than a heartfelt, creative Iron Maiden release.

Honestly this is not a bad album, but it absolutely pales in comparison to the band's prior releases and comes up incredibly short next to the album that came just before it.  It is a disappointment.  But damn if it does not have a cool album cover.