Great Individual Songs

From the moment the album begins, you know Maiden's trying something different. The opening song, "Satellite 15..." is unlike anything else Maiden has done. It's a highly experimental track, even though it's second part, "The Final Frontier" is your standard Maiden tune.

And, yes, the rest of the album is exactly what you'd expect: something different. A huge portion of the album consists of progressive epics. 5 out of the 10 songs of the album are over 8 minutes!

While each of the epics is great, they unfortunately all follow the same formula: quiet begining, loud ending. Yes, it does work. But starting slow and ending fast on all songs of the album gets quite repetitive. Why not start fast and have a slow section in the middle of the song? Maiden did it with "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". It's not like they're uncapable of it.

And this is my problem with the album. Individually, I'd give a 10 out of 10 to each song. But as an album, they don't work together. With over one hour duration, and the same formula applied to all songs, it gets quite hard to listeng to the album in it's entirety. It feels more like a collection of songs than an album. Even though I've listened to each and every song hundreds of times, I only listened to the full album in order about 3 or 4 times. It's just too tiresome. I normally pick 3 or 4 songs and listen to those, then switch to something else, as I can't stand listening to the full album.

Since I'm reviewing the album as a whole, I'll give four stars. I believe any fan of Maiden, Metal and even Progressive Rock will love the songs of the album. "Excellent addition to any metal music colletion"