Pekka When Iron Maiden was taking a break after touring for their Dance of Death album, Bruce Dickinson managed to find some spare time from his schedule already crammed with flying aeroplanes, hosting radio shows and whatnot, and as a result teamed up with producer/multi-instrumentalist Roy Z to record his sixth solo album Tyranny of Souls.

The intro Mars Within is a brief atmospheric build-up to the actual opening track Abduction, which is suprisingly thrashy piece with a melodic chorus, featuring a couple of wonderfully effective double bass drumming bursts. Soul Intruders follows the similar patterns of thrash riffing, hard drumming and melodic choruses, and they both are very good quality pieces of metal. Following them are three slower tracks, Kill Devil Hill is a soaring mid-tempo track about Bruce's big passion flying, Navigate the Seas of the Sun is the closest to a ballad that the album has to offer, and River of No Return brings keyboards to the forefront in its stunningly atmospheric verses. Top class songs all of them.

Power of the Sun picks the tempo up again, but doesn't do it quite as memorably as the opening pair had done. It is rather like a Bruce-by-numbers piece, but as such a very fine one, especially it's harmonized instrumental section. Devil on a Hog on the other hand is a brilliant lighter rock number à la Tattooed Millionaire from the first solo album. I dare say this one is one of his best solo songs ever. Believil is a slight let down after the rock n' roll fun of the previous number, but is a fine cut in its slow darkness, perhaps marred a bit by a bit too plain chorus. The album ending title track follows the style of its predecessor but does it better and is a great closer for a slightly uneven but mostly wonderful album.

Bruce's voice is in a great shape as opposed to the recent Maiden outing where he sounded incredibly forced at times. He really shines here, but sadly there's something bad to be said about the group's performance as well. Gone are the tasteful guitar solos courtesy of Adrian Smith from the previous two albums, Roy Z too often ends up warming his fingers for a directionless shred session. Thankfully this doesn't apply for every song, and for example Soul Intruders has a very fine example of his better moments.

If The Final Frontier really turns out to be the final Iron Maiden album as has been speculated, Bruce has nothing to worry about musically as long as his solo albums keep the same high quality as his latest three excellent works.