The Mother Rockers - Kobra (2022)

Country: Canada
Style: Glam Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 5 Jan 2022
Sites: Facebook | YouTube

With a cover like that, it's completely obvious from moment one that the Mother Rockers want to channel the glam rock of the eighties, even though they're from Quebec rather than Hollywood's Sunset Strip. The immediate question I had was whether they're a pure joke band or whether the music they play can stand up on its own. Looking at song titles, not to forget the T Rex cover star, I had to wonder. Maybe songs like Hot Mom and Late Nite Struggle might be on one side of the line but She's Got a Dick and Too Hot to Fuck are on the other. There was only one way to find out and I thought opener I Can't Wait sounded decent, so I persevered.

And this isn't bad at all. Yes, it's just as obviously eighties glam rock as you imagine it is, but it had little interest in just pitching clichéd joke songs. At least, I felt that way without trying to focus on the lyrics to songs like Rivers of Slobber. The beats are decent, the musicians are capable and the hooks are as good as they need to be. No, there isn't anything remotely original here and I'm still half convinced that this album is just a pitch to land a support slot on a Steel Panther tour. I'd love to know if the musicians in the Mother Rockers have day jobs in regular bands, ones where they're not listed as Billie Ballz, Bobby Coxx or Max Shaft.

Frankly, the more the Mother Rockers rock it up, the better they sound. Lady Mary-Ann kicks with style, the guitars of, good grief, Max Shaft and Johnny Bucket, generating neat buzzsaw riffs and decent solos too. Rivers of Slobber and Runnin' Away aren't bad songs at all. I managed to avoid a definition of what Y.M.B.B. stands for but the song of that title is decent too. The first time that I couldn't avoid the stupidity of it all was She's Got a Dick eight songs in, which delivers its title like it's a refrain in a movie trailer.

Quite how much a band means this style is always a difficult question to answer. There's no reason why a band can't play eighties hair metal unironically, however hard that's becoming (ha!) to do. I liked bands like Mötley Crüe, Ratt and Kix early on, however ridiculous they looked in outrageous stage attire. I also liked where a lot of later bands overzealously caught up in the buzz went when grunge took the scene down. So ditch the make-up and stupid costumes and just play your rock 'n' roll like you mean it. Maybe it'll have rougher edges that way and you'll get more bikers than hot chicks baring their boobs in the audience, but it'll sound good.

This is nowhere near as good as the early days of glam metal, though I did appreciate how dirty a lot of the riffs managed to get. It's also nowhere near as interesting as those later bands turning the genre into something new, but it's decent stuff, at least until we get to the inevitable ballad, Since You're Gone, which is just tiresome. It's the only song I'd skip here because of its music. The lyrics, on the hand, could prompt more of that. I kept catching snippets here and there and every instance led to some serious rolling of eyeballs, the more the album ran on.

So, I ended up liking some of this but not wanting to come back to it. I certainly have no interest in checking out any of their music videos. They might be hilarious, but I'm here for the music and it's not entirely possible to just enjoy it on its own merits. C'est la vie.

Wolves in the Throne Room - Primordial Arcana (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Atmospheric Black Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Aug 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Twitter | YouTube

Here's another album by a favourite band that I completely failed to notice in 2021, Wolves in the Throne Room being easily my favourite American black metal band of any description. Quite how we're supposed to describe them properly, I have no idea, because atmospheric black metal is an attempt at a start only, rather than a full definition of their genre. Whatever they play, they play it in original fashion and I've been a big fan ever since their second album, Two Hunters, blew me away in 2007.

Mountain Magick starts this one out as I'd expect from the band, not with the full on wall of sound black metal approach they do so well but with the generation of unique atmosphere that they do even better. Those are synths to kick off, assembled rather than played, and unusual rhythms and sounds that immediately take us outside and into the wilds. When Aaron Weaver's drums ramp up to full speed, the guitars find a much slower melody and we float intensely, a feeling I often get on Wolves in the Throne Room albums.

I liked this opener and I liked Spirit of Lightning more, especially with its rhythmic strings that are reminiscent of the koto, but neither song blew me away and nothing did until Underworld Aurora five tracks in. Sure, I dug the sheer power on offer in Primal Chasm (Gift of Fire), but I love Wolves in the Throne Room for their dynamics and the way they can find and mine grooves that turn into different grooves with such wildly different intensity that they boggle the mind. That shows up on Underworld Aurora.

I don't even know what's in play early in this piece—breaking glass? Native American flutes?—but the first couple of minutes could be taken from a Dead Can Dance album before, blink and you'll miss it, they suddenly flow into a black metal song. This is sonic weaving at its subtlest and it goes back and forth. As the piece builds, it also finds a majestic sweep, something that this band are a dab hand at. It's only seven minute long, hardly a lengthy piece for them, but it feels epic, furious drums frantic under a melody that soars free of every concern in the world, most of which seem to be packed into the final few moments.

There's only one true epic here and that's next, because Masters of Rain and Storm clocks in at an effortless eleven minutes. It actually gets really down and dirty, an old school proto-extreme riff I could imagine on an early Bathory album emerging from the frenzy, though it re-immerses itself pretty quickly. This one starts fast and stays there for a while, but it eventually finds that majestic sweep after a few minutes. It also drops down into an acoustic section and shifts gears again late. It does a lot of things, as Wolves in the Throne Room songs often do, though this one hasn't found its way under my skin yet. It may well do yet.

Oddly, I think my favourite piece here other than Underworld Aurora, which stands out more and more each time I listen through, is Eostre, and that's really just a three minute interlude after an epic to get us ready for the closer, Skyclad Passage. There's not much to Eostre but it's beautifully done, an enticing pastoral soundscape as much as Skyclad Passage is a warning of a soundscape, a soundtrack to a folk horror movie that's just entering the woods.

And so this is a good album but not a great one, I think. It has moments that show the magic that the Weaver brothers are known for, but it doesn't have as many as I'd like. It still has that sense of place that the band have always had, what they call Cascadian black metal but which is really just a blend of the older European styles with ambient and folk elements, along with a heck of a lot of patience. This still sounds like Wolves in the Throne Room above any other comparison and I'm up for any new material by this band. I wanted more from this one though.

Insecurity - Intruder of Reality (2022)

Country: Chile
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Jan 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | YouTube

I had two thrash metal albums to choose between for a slot this week. Both were released on New Years Day and both sound good to me, but I chose this one over the other, not because it was the best per se but because it worked best at getting my blood pumping, which is something I'll never not look for in a thrash album. I do like midpace thrash that chugs along with technical proficiency, but I love fast paced thrash that cleans my clock and this is definitely the latter.

Insecurity hail from Santiago in Chile and it's their debut album, after a host of demos and a split live tapewith Suicide Club. They've been around since 2016 and they've obviously been listening to a lot of American thrash, because the influences are all over the map but all American too. That's a cover that looks like it could be from a Crumbsuckers album and there's a clear crossover feel on the opener, Deambulating Future, which rumbles along like New York hardcore punk, after a neat acoustic intro, something I still immediately still associate with early Metallica.

Where We Go... Over Again is the most crossover this album gets, but there's a little on the title track as well, where it's paired alongside some west coast chug. It's not the song that reminds me most of Testament, but it's where they came up for a lot of comparison. However, there are a lot of tempo changes, not just between mid and fast but with a very cool and almost folky slowdown late in the first half. It's an ambitious song, especially this early on a debut album, but I think they nail it. They're not revisiting Diamond Head just for a lesson in riffs, they're taking a look at their songwriting and really mixing things up. I love that.

And so we go. This is consistently built off west coast chug, with more ambitious technical chops on offer in the vein of maybe a Heathen, some New York crossover vibe for the attitude and even, on occasion, some good old fashioned speed metal. Vocalist Matias Reyes just has to be channelling a Skeptics Apocalypse-era John Cyriis scream on Stabbed by Treason. It's a fast song and it does the job of fast songs, which is that blood pumping energy. I'd love to see this band on stage!

Insecurity are a four piece band with two guitars, Reyes handling one of them alongside his duties behind the mike. He's a capable vocalist, especially for a thrash band who like their sound with an element of dirt in it, but I bet he thinks of himself as a guitarist first and foremost. Never mind if a song like The Worst of Days could have been lifted right off Testament's The Legacy; I had a blast simply following the interplay of Reyes and Kristofer Vega's guitars, especially late on in the song. Other songs just blister too, like T.F.Y., and, even if I start out impressed by Diego Carvajal's bass, like on H.S.H.T., I end up back with the guitars in the instrumental jam sections.

I realise here that I've mentioned everyone except Matias Oyarce and that's not fair because he's a thoroughly reliable demon behind the drumkit. He and Carvajal are the bedrock that Reyes and Vega can build on with their riffs and solos. Even if I found myself mostly listening for those guitar workouts, I know full well that they wouldn't be there without that rhythm section behind them to maintain an often furious pace. So kudos all around to a tight band indeed. This isn't even close to the most original thrash I've heard, even this year, but it's written well, it's played well and it's an energetic fifty minute blood pumping workout. That's a good thing.

Halocraft - A Mother to Scare Away the Darkness (2021)

Country: Greece
Style: Post-Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 5 Nov 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

One of the genres that's fascinated me the most since diving back deep into rock and metal here at Apocalypse Later is post-rock. I don't have a major background in the genre, so I'm learning and one of the places teaching me about it is a Facebook group called WherePostRockDwells, through which I've discovered a host of excellent albums. They recently published their top ten of 2021 and, above major names like Mono, Mogwai and God is an Astronaut, at the top of that list was this, an album from a post-rock outfit I hadn't heard of, who hail from northern Greece. They're Halocraft and this is their second full length album.

I enjoyed it immensely but, unlike many post-rock albums, it didn't take me anywhere. The babies gurgling at the start of the title track to kick off the album helped to infuse it with warmth but I'm pretty sure that would be the overriding feeling regardless. It's there in the guitarwork, which is welcoming; it's there in the bass, which is enveloping; and it's there in the grand sweep, which is a lively but comforting journey inwards. This isn't taking me anywhere, but it's making me feel very comfortable indeed where I'm already at.

And the album continues the way the title track started out, the variety primarily in pacing rather than stylistic exploration. It's always warm, whatever the pace, but Halocraft bring in sadness with sections that slow and feel more pensive. That's there as Small Victories begins and it's especially there on For the Son You Could Not Save, which plucks at the heartstrings even if we don't read its title first. Small Victories plays with its pace a lot, though, ramping up to energetic speeds often, the mood changing each time.

That's not to say that they don't bring in other sounds here and there, just that their core palette is happy to focus on a specific feel that underpins everything on offer. There's some reggae late in New Beginnings. There's some neat electronica early in The Machine that's quickly reminiscent of Tangerine Dream. There are echoey power chords on Through the Caverns that heavy the piece up a little and darker guitars that do likewise, without it ever becoming post-metal. Small Victories is a little Celtic with its melodies. But they're all variations on a theme really.

And so there's not a heck of a lot to say about this one, beyond it being excellent. You could pick a track at random, any track, and, if you like that one, you can be pretty sure you're going to like all the others. In fact, I'm pretty sure you're going to like everything anyway, unless you just hate all instrumental music or you despise post-rock in all its incarnations. This isn't ever going to convert a naysayer, but it's hard to imagine anyone not liking it. It's inherently likeable stuff, effortlessly melodious and ever-welcoming. It's a warm blanket of an album on a cold winter day.

Pristine Kids - Leave No Trace (2022)

Country: Russia
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 2 Jan 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

That's a dark and angry note to kick off this prog rock album from Russia! It utterly stripped away any preconceptions I might have had as to where this was going to go and it took a while for me to find my bearings. There's some Pink Floyd in the guitars, some wicked precision in the drums and a real anger in the bass, but it's the powerhouse vocals of Ri Vinogradova that steal our attention the most. Hers is not a voice to forget!

It's hard to describe what she does here. She doesn't leap in front of the band and take over from the instruments. She's arguably not the dominant force at this point, because that bass is so prominent in the mix that it's impossible to ignore. However, she simply refuses to do what we expect, which ought to start with the fact that we expect a singer to sing and Vinogradova just doesn't do much of that here. That's not to say that this is an instrumental album; she's all over it, just doing other things.

She doesn't sing here so much as she speaks in tongues. She croons and she snarls and she flows in rivulets. She's velvet and she's ice and she's acid. She's restrained danger and she's unrestrained fury. She's an angel and she's a horde of demons. Whatever she does is notable and magnetic and that holds for when it's merely to pause a lot more than we expect early in Hide and Seek. Stop It isn't the only showcase for her voice here, but it's an excellent start.

I have to wonder about her background, because her palette is especially rich. She's not just a rock singer, that's for sure. Surely, she's done musical theatre because she's so dynamic. I would expect jazz in there too, because of the way she does so much without actually using words. Stop It shows that there's blues and gospel too, maybe at the heart of everything, with soul erupting from that. And I have to wonder about the background of her bandmates too, because there's theatrics in all they do as well. The drummer is Baard Kolstad and everything else not a guest texture is played by producer Sasha Smirnov, who also wrote the lyrics.

I mention guest textures, because there are textures everywhere here and many of them are the contribution of guests, the flute on Hide and Seek, the viola and cello on A Pillar of Salt and a bass solo on Lullaby that's delightfully smooth. That's not all of them, because there's a circus texture late in A Pillar of Salt and a musical box texture in Lullaby that are presumably due to Smirnov, an impressively versatile musician, who moves effortlessly from surf to prog to heavy grunge.

There's a musical box feel in Boundless too, which also features plenty of aging static and ends up sounding like new wave, Björk jamming with Shriekback, but there's so much versatility on offer, it would be crazy to suggest that this band sound like anyone else exclusively. Pristine Kids may well sound like all sorts of other people at points, but they're just grabbing colours and textures for an impressive musical palette. On the other side of their auditory blender, we get neatly original in a host of different ways for different songs. Boundless is not Stop It and neither are Silence.

The challenge is to reconcile all of this as one band, which is one I'm relishing. There's a special joy in how a song like Silence evolves. It starts out as jagged alternative rock, drops into experimental classical, adds jazzy rhythms over a sultry Vinogradova, grows into intricacy with a neat viola, and then launches into angry bass-heavy grunge, Vinogradova screaming just as well as she crooned. I loved this song on a first listen but I'm still exploring its depths after half a dozen. And, to a lesser degree, the same goes for the entire album.

Aephanemer - A Dream of Wilderness (2021)

Country: France
Style: Symphonic Melodic Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 19 Nov 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

This is their third studio album, but Aephanemer crossed my path with their second, Prokopticon, which was an easy winner of my Album of the Month in March 2019. I've been eagerly awaiting the next album from them and somehow completely missed it, given that it saw release in November. Fortunately, I have January to catch up on this sort of inadvertent omission! The good news is that it's another really good album and, now I'm past the COVID I had when I was first tackling this, it's easy to see that. COVID clearly messes with the appreciation centres of the brain and it frustrated my appreciation of this one for a while.

Listening now, it's hard to imagine how I didn't fall for Antigone immediately. It's a lively piece for the first track proper, almost a classical dance translated into melodic death metal. There are old rhythms to it, both in the bouncy keyboards and the lyrical delivery in the verses, but the style is a new one, mostly melodeath but with a firm black metal influence in Marion Bascoul's vocals and a few wall of sound sections. This leads to a song that sometimes sounds like Mozart and sometimes Cradle of Filth, which is an unusual but welcome mix.

Of Volition is a lot more traditional, if traditional is a word we can use with Aephanemer. After an Enya-esque opening, it chugs along like melodeath is supposed to, finds a neat melody to layer on the top of it and ends up as much like Iron Maiden as anything more extreme, albeit with a French accent that's there not in the vocals but in the textures of the guitar. Anyone listening to this just has to assume that the band are from somewhere on the continent.

Most of this album is closer to Antigone than Of Volition, but there's another element that spices it up considerably, that's there throughout but obvious on Roots and Leaves and that's prog. This was always my favourite piece from my very first time through, even when COVID wasn't letting a tired brain comprehend what was going on, but it keeps on getting better. There's dynamic play in everything that Aephanemer do but it's at its best on Roots and Leaves, which is a gift that keeps on giving. It's not shocking to find a guitar interlude following it, before the band leap into Strider.

It's easy to call out the songwriting as the best aspect of Aephanemer. Sure, we critics can conjure up comparisons here and there—they've clearly been listening to a lot of Dark Tranquillity—but it wouldn't be fair to suggest that they sound like anyone except themselves. That's an achievement in melodic death metal, where so many bands sound just like *insert favourite Gothenburg sound band here*, and it's sourced as much from of their unique songwriting as Bascoul's dark vocals or the clean symphonic tone of Martin Hamiche's lead guitar. Both those things are in evidence on songs like Panta Rhei or Le Radeau de la Méduse, but they're not the only reasons why they're so obviously Aephanemer.

I don't think this album holds together quite as well as its predecessor, though I really ought to go back to that to listen afresh. It's still a really good album, though, cementing Aephanemer for me as a rare melodeath band with a unique sound of their own, a highly symphonic take that trawls in prog and black and even a little folk, given the presence of Old French Song here, which is a cover of a piece by Tchaikovsky. It can't be coincidence that I prefer my classical music Russian and vibrant, something that I fully expect Hamiche to find too, given that he rarely misses an opportunity to do something in that vein with his guitar.

Now, to not miss the next Aephanemer album in a couple of years time...

Blue Merrow - Blue Merrow (2022)

Country: Spain
Style: Psychedelic Hard/Blues Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 1 Jan 2022
Sites: Instagram | YouTube

With an 2021 oversight album behind me today, let's launch into 2022 with something utterly wild, appropriately enough given that a merrow is a type of mermaid (or merman) in Celtic mythology. Just as such creatures swim free in the vast oceans, though bizarrely have to wear a special hat, a cochaillín draíochta, to ensure they can stay in the water, rather like a selkie skin in Scotland, this band swim free through the ocean of seventies rock genres. I wonder if the musicians each wear a little magic cap of their own on stage to stay with the mythology.

If it wasn't for the punchy 21st century production that's agreeably simple but very effective, this would sound like one of those hidden seventies gems that get turned up every once in a while in a backwoods town thrift store that doesn't look like it's opened for the past thirty years. If you're a crate digger, you'll know the sort of album. It would have a nondescript cover that prompts you to pick it up anyway for no reason you can place. You've never heard of the band or anyone in it but it might be worth the fifty cents they're asking to give it a listen. Then you slap it on your deck and it simply blows you away.

I certainly couldn't stop listening to it, even though part of that has to do with trying to figure out what the band is actually trying to do. I know next to nothing about them. They're Galician, from a province called Pontevedra. This is their debut album, even if it feels like they've all been playing music, and music together, for decades. Their Instagram says they play psychedelic hard rock and I can go along with that, but it doesn't remotely address everything that they do.

There are five musicians in the band though I had to translate a news article from the Spanish to find out who they are. The lead vocalist is Damián Garrido, who also plays percussion because I'd expected from the opener to find that he didn't only have a single role in the line-up. The insanely talented guitarist is Ángel Olañeta and I'm sure we're all going to hear a lot about him soon. The keyboardist and organist is Ángel Vejo, who's prominent on this album. That leaves Diego Hernán Ruiz on bass and Alberto Cid on drums.

Initially they sound prog rock. Uncle Tom opens up the album with an extended keyboard note that suggests something deep and purple, but it builds with melodies more reminiscent of Uriah Heep. It's all in that seventies heavy organ style and, when the drums and then the vocals join in, we find that it's all firmly prog, albeit very lively prog with accented vocals that are loose in a psychedelic fashion, prominent keyboards and a delightful guitar.

And then, two and a half minutes into the song, it suddenly turns into a rocking blues number. It's suddenly all about Rory Gallagher and Albert King and Alvin Lee. What's telling is that, whenever the vocalist chimes in with a few lines, he ends with a gleeful laugh and hands over to the band to just have some fun for a while, which they promptly do with abandon. It's quite the jam and it's an entirely joyous one, as if everyone involved has nothing they'd rather be doing with ther lives.

Blue Merrow is the epic of the album, at just over ten minutes, and it's a prog rock number again as it starts out, with water effects and vocalising from Garrido, playing a siren. Instruments show up and it's prog story time, children, but halfway it all gets down and funky, like Carlos Santana is suddenly jamming with Sly Stone. There's a solid heavy riff to get the second half into motion and I'm hearing Focus in where the song goes and plenty of Pink Floyd too—early seventies Floyd that is, pre-Alan Parsons tape manipulations.

Much of what follows mixes up those sounds. Three Ways to Say Goodbye plays like that early Pink Floyd style, psychedelia and originality blended into a fine rock song, but with some truly searing guitarwork from Olañeta. He sears the sky early in The Utopist and I could just see him playing in a sort of trance, with his eyes closed and his face contorted into the sort of unwieldy shapes that Gary Moore found when he wasn't merely playing an instrument but acting as a conduit through which magical sounds flow into our world. It's not just the guitar, with organ tones as gorgeously warm as those that Vejo conjures up here, but it's so often the guitar.

Images wraps up the album in a completely different fashion, given that it's a ballad that entirely strips away both guitar and organ, so that Garrido can shine over a singer/songwriter style piano. The band provide neat vocal harmonies rather than searing jams and solos, leaving this one a bit out of place on this album, but it's also a good song and it helps to highlight just how versatile this band is. Where have they been to conjure up sounds like these? Were they all born in 1955 and fell into a portal in time in 1971 that dumped them out in Galicia half a century later?

Whatever the answers to those questions happen to be, this is an absolute gem of a debut album and I can't believe, given that I only give out a few 9/10s every year, that I'm kicking off 2022 with one on my very first day of reviews.

Iron Maiden - Senjutsu (2021)

Country: UK
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 3 Sep 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

January for me is always about both starting into a new year of releases and finishing up the last with some notable albums that I missed for some reason. Usually the latter means what gained a lot of notice but passed me by. However, I lost a couple of months of 2021 to events and September in particular had a few key releases I never quite caught up with, starting with this one, which I've been looking forward to ever since I saw the video to The Writing on the Wall back in July. So here is the latest from the first rock band I called my favourite, their seventeenth studio album and the first from them in six years, since 2015's The Book of Souls.

The first thing to highlight about this album is that there's a lot of it. It's a double album, with ten songs that rack up over two hours of running time between them. When I was growing up with the band, they tended to wrap up each album with an epic track, with the thirteen minute The Rime of the Ancient Mariner being my first. This one wraps up with no fewer than three epics, every one a ten minute plus song, and there are only two tracks under six minutes. It may be telling that those two may well be my least favourites, which probably says a lot about me.

The title track starts things out well, with huge drums from Nicko McBrain that successfully aim to sound like Japanese taiko drums, but there are flaws on display. It's is a decent opener, but over a few repeat listens it feels like it's slower and less energetic than it should have been. Stratego is faster but it also feels slower than it should have been, which sets a real precedent here. It's one of those shorter songs and it's not a bad one but it feels more like a rehash of old ground rather than something new to get our teeth into. The oddly muddy production job from Kevin Shirley doesn't help, because it buries Bruce Dickinson in the mix in favour of the lower end, without making the bass of Steve Harris particularly audible.

Fortunately it picks up from there. The other single, The Writing on the Wall, is much more like it from my perspective, even when not accompanied by that memorable video. I like this one, which feels just like classic Maiden without reminding of any particular classic Maiden song, and, I like it more with each listen. It's a story song for Dickinson, but it's also an instrumental workout for the whole band and any Maiden song that does both of those things has the opportunity to become a great Maiden song. If this one isn't as great as some of what follows, it is at least a very good one.

The standouts for me begin with the next song, Lost in a Lost World, a nine and a half minute epic that's the first of the epics on this epic album. Like The Writing on the Wall, it starts of with a very memorable intro, introduces a strong riff with a folky melody and builds with lots of dynamic play. Again like The Writing on the Wall, Bruce gets plenty to do here and with much more versatility to add nuance, but there are plenty of neat instrumental sections too. Songs like this one are why an array of sources have rated this album so highly and featured it so prominently in end of year lists. Lost in a Lost World is up there with Fear of the Dark for me and for many of the same reasons.

The Time Machine does a lot of the same things, with an especially solid riff, though it's not as long as it feels it is. This feels like another epic, but it only just makes it past seven minutes. All of that holds for Darkest Hour too, while Death of the Celts, which has the length, matches Lost in a Lost World as a classic Maiden epic. I need to listen to this album a few more times to see which of the last three behemoths I like best. Right now, I like all of them, with Death of the Celts nudging out The Parchment as the best of the three and Hell on Earth not far behind them, but I'm sure that I will change that order, probably more than once.

The point is that these are really good songs and there's a lot of them to enjoy. I've heard a lot of albums that are shorter than these three songs in isolation, which aren't even the entirety of the second disc of this album. I've also heard a lot of albums that don't contain as much fun as a single instrumental section during the second half of Death of the Celts. This hearkens back to To Tame a Land in my book and The Parchment does too. Hell on Earth, on the other hand, aims at the classic galloping tempo that is such a huge part of their sound. It's not far off the four minute mark when Bruce shows up.

With four classic epics totallying around fifty minutes of music, it's clear that this is an 8/10. I'm going to hold back from a 9/10 though, because not everything is up to that standard. Stratego is a little better than I thought it was on a first listen, but it still fades compared to the rest. Senjutsu is another good but lesser track, as is Days of Future Past. Most of all, I'm not a fan of the mix, an obstacle to the music which should be clean and crisp and, I'm sure, will be on stage. So, 8/10 this is but it's also features more great Maiden songs than any Maiden album since maybe Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. That's why this album is so important. Now, time to listen to it all again.