Wednesday 10 February 2010

Egyptian Riffs

At a loss for something to write about, I slipped an album (Yep. vinyl stickler me) onto the turntable. I hadn't listened to Iron Maiden's Powerslave for some time and I was just in the mood for their operatic rock, and then I thought I'd write about this album. After all Heavy Metal isn't usually my type of music but I love several albums from Iron Maiden.

I discovered this album many years ago at a friends house - he was a full time metal head, or headbager as we used to call them. The track Rime of the Ancient Mariner was playing - the middle 8 of that song really struck me at the time. All of a sudden all the guitars die, the driving rock riff seems to have been strangled and all we are left with is the errie sound of a shift adrift on the ocean and over that comes Bruce Dickenson (least I assume it's Bruce) quoting the most famous lines from Colerdge's poem -

Day after day, night after night ,we stuck nor breath nor motion. As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. Water, water everywhere and all the boards did shrink.Water, water everywhere and not any drop to drink.

It's a gloriously effective moment - spooky in its intensisty and the quiet section (as I call it) lasts for maybe four minutes before the driving rock guitars come in to finish off the song. It's a true work of art and transcends genre so that someone like me, who finds a lot of heavy metal music to be silly with all the devil worship and randy demons, can truly love this song. And I do. It's more than a rock song - it is a genuine artistic triumph - moody, atmospheric and rocking. True you can head-bang to it but you'll be doing some cultural head-banging. Ah ah, excellent!



A section of the track (including that effective middle 8 ) is embedded below, together with links to the second section - it's over ten minutes long, you know.

The rest of the album is equally good (there's not a bad track on here) and each track is almost a novel in its depth, since Maiden's style of songwriting is very much narrative driven, like a story set to music. From the rollicking rock of Aces High and 2 Minutes to Midnight, to the Egyptian saga of the title track the album doesn't put a foot wrong. In fact the track Powerslave is probably my second favourite cut on the platter. I like a few other Maiden albums but this one, to me, stands out and will always be an essential record for me.

3 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

Yeah, I like me some Maiden. Though I am still a bit more of a Judas Priest kind of guy.

Bruce said...

I had the Powerslave poster on my bedroom door. Cause it was a lot cooler then the lame Clash posters that were around then.

TRX said...

Thank you so much,I was searching THE TAINTED ARCHIVE Ebook Download since 1 Month.

VAPING IS SAFER THAN BREATHING

 The UK's new tax on vaping which will come into force in 2026 is not only immoral but patently insane, and will hit those reformed smok...