Iron Maiden’s voyage reaches ‘Final Frontier’

For 35 years, Iron Maiden has represented the best in what heavy metal can offer. Their album art, lyrics and undead mascot Eddie constructed an image that horrified parents rejected and wide-eyed youths embraced, but it was always their second-to-none songwriting and theatrical live performances that set them apart from their counterparts. 

But even a well-oiled machine is liable to rust eventually, and the band’s 2006 full-length “A Matter of Life and Death” was applauded by only their most diehard fans. Critics complained about the business-as-usual approach and recurring song structures — namely the long, mellow intros and codas that were present on all but two of the album’s ten tracks.

“The Final Frontier,” the band’s fifteenth long-player, sees Maiden falling back on a few of its old tricks, but also expanding its repertoire to include sounds it has never explored before. The album opens with “Satellite 15,” a four-minute intro track of guitar feedback, distant synthesizers and electronic drums that would be at home on one of singer Bruce Dickinson’s solo albums, but which is totally foreign to Maiden. That leads into rollicking single “The Final Frontier,” the band’s best opener since 2000’s “The Wicker Man.” 

The experimentation continues throughout the record’s 76 minutes. “Isle of Avalon” and “Starblind” have groovier middle sections than anything the band has done, “Coming Home” is the closest thing to a ballad they’ve ever composed, “The Alchemist” is the fastest song they’ve written in over a decade and “When the Wild Wind Blows” is the third-longest song of their career. 

As with any album that pushes its creators’ boundaries, not every experiment works. The acoustic section in “The Talisman” is unnecessary and boring, and the verses to “El Dorado” see Dickinson singing in a totally new way that incidentally sounds terrible. Still, the band’s effort is commendable, and it has enough variation to keep the diehards around while bringing some lost sheep back to the herd. If the rumors that “The Final Frontier” will be Iron Maiden’s final album are true, they could go out a hell of a lot worse.