Our still recently minted annual tradition of the off-topic commentary is back! After records by Little Boots and GZA in previous years, we're once again wandering away from Our Thing for our final We Have A Commentary of the year. As voted on by our patrons, we're discussing an Iron Maiden record, 1986's Somewhere In Time in particular! From the band's emerging structural experimentation to its classic galloping metal to the increasingly adventurous themes and topics they were taking on, we have a blast discussing one of our mutual favourite metal bands of all time.
We Have a Technical
We Have A Commentary: Iron Maiden, "Somewhere In Time"
(upbeat music) - You're listening to We Have a Commentary, an off topic, iDye-U-Dye.com bonus podcast. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Take an amazing voyage to somewhere in time. - The new album from Iron Meats. (upbeat music) Iron Meats. Catch them somewhere on tour. Sometime in early 1987. (upbeat music) Somewhere in time on cattle. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hello and welcome. You're listening to The Year End. We have a commentary, off topic, commentary podcast here from iDye-U-Dye.com. Brought to you with the kind support of our backers at patreon.com. My name is Alex Kennedy. - Mine is Bruce Lord. - And as selected by our backers at patreon.com, this year our off topic. We have a commentary will be on the topic of an Iron Maiden album. And seeing as last year, Bruce was very, very insistent that we do the liquid swords. - I was the Joe Biden meme. - Yes, exactly. - So this year I have basically done the same and said if we're gonna talk about a maiden album, I want it to be somewhere in time, not because I think somewhere in time is necessarily their best album, although it is my personal favorite, but because I think there's a lot of meat on the bone for discussion. I think if we were doing something that is perhaps more broadly loved and considered their all time greatest, say like a number of the beast or a power slave, then it would be a lot more gushing and a lot less digging into what works and what doesn't work. So this seemed like a more fertile ground for us to dig in on starting things off with what is kind of the title track caught somewhere in time. Bruce, I like this one a lot. - I do too. It is very much to me what I think, and I'm very much of the opinion that whatever you wanna say, the golden age, kind of from peace of mind to seventh son inclusive there with the classic lineup, Paris, Smith, Dickinson, Murray and Nico. If you're going for a maiden record of that style, you want to have an opener like this that is just giving you what Iron Maiden is all about musically thematically. You've got just the classic galloping Steve Harris triplets and then Dickinson really leaning into not just like the classic operatic vocals, but also like the "Ha ha ha!" Like the evil "I am a trickster devil" on your shoulder whispering into your ear, kind of you know, laughing and sneering going on there in addition to obviously the introduction to the loose theme of time being the thing. The band has gone on to say many times. Like look, it's not a concept record. We didn't plan it to be a concept record. When we just kind of during the songwriting process, we all kind of realized, oh yeah, a couple of us have two or three songs that touch upon the theme of time in some sort of a way. But given that that is a loose theme to guides the record, I think it makes sense musically and thematically to start with this one. - Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this one has basically everything that I want in Iron Maiden's song. It's got that great Steve Harris baseline. He wrote this one, which is one of those ones where you just instantly know that Steve wrote it just based on the arrangement and the way in which it is written. It has like a sort of a character driven narrative of sorts, two absolutely ripping solos from both guitarists, both Dave and Adrian gets play, like really nice fun solos. - Were you able to find individual credits for the solos? Okay, I looked and I could not find them, but yes, good, I'm glad you did. - Yeah, in most cases, if Adrian wrote the song, he also does the solo, but there's a couple where they both play. But with that said, both of them play solos on this particular one, I think Adrian first and then Dave second. But one of the things that I think people know about this particular track is that this is really the first time that you get to hear maybe using synths, especially on that intro. Notably, when they played the tour for this record, they were using the closing titles from Blade Runner as sort of an intro track to this as the set opener, which they also did on their most recent tour, Bruce, which was loosely sort of a, a somewhere in time, it seems to us. - Yes, yeah, that was a new one, yeah. - You look at footage from this tour, they would use the Blade Runner music and then go immediately into somewhere in time. Bruce growing his hair back out, which is pretty wild. But anyway, with that said, I don't know, this is everything I want in an Iron Maiden song. It's like seven and a half minutes long, Wicked Good Solo's great baseline, like super, you know, made me lyrics. I think it's probably worth noting here that I think this one also helps set the table for seventh son, not just because of the use of synthesizers, but I think sort of the more broad, like we are going to approach some supernatural hokem, but not in a way that's easily defined by historical incidents or beliefs. Like there's plenty of Maiden songs before this that are about sort of like witchcraft or, you know, a satanic or pagan ritual and so forth, whereas this is much more vague in what it is actually getting at. And I think seventh son sort of builds on from there. - Well, I think you're getting the fact that they are interested, as most of us are, when we kind of move on from just being 10 years old and just like, oh no, there's hobbits and shit. And sort of beginning to think a little bit about the philosophical ramifications of some of those ideas, like, you know, a song like The Clairvoyant, for instance, on seventh son is much more about just mortality in general than actual like, you know, wizards who can see into the future or shit like that, right? And I think that like, that's the same sort of thing that's going on here. We've caught someone time, technically loosely inspired by time after time, a movie that is just very light fun. - It's some people have said that. The band has never confirmed that. - I thought one of the band had confirmed that. I could be wrong. But if you're not aware, it's a movie that's very light fun. I will always have a soft spot for it because of seeing it as a kid and just loving the concept of H.G. Wells having to chase Jack the Ripper through time. Also as an adult, I still have difficulty telling Malef McDowell and David Warner apart from one another. So seeing in the same movie when I was like 10 years old, just blew my fucking mind. So, you know, fine, the idea of somebody that is somebody that is sort of dragging you through or seducing you through in an almost, you know, Mephistophely and Faustus sort of way through all of, you know, various points in history and offering you respite power, whatever it might be. And whether or not that's just, you know, your own conscience as you react to aging and things like that. That's that sort of looseness that I think they're, that they are, you're right, they're experimenting with on this record and that they're gonna really have cinched in on "Seven Son." But there are a couple of songs on here later on in "Somewhere in Time" that I do think even have a more particular and philosophical way of addressing that. So yeah, no, it's, you kind of get the best of both worlds here, right? Like the very like hard specific, hey, it's "Blade Runner." Hey, it's this H.G. Wells movie. But also, what does thinking about these themes inspire within us? And I don't know, that's a sign of maturity, I think. - Yes. We're getting into wasted years here. But first, Bruce, I'm gonna be asking each of us to rank all of the songs on this record in a couple of categories. And at the end, we will give an overall rating based on that. So on a scale of one to five, one being least good, five being most good, I'll be asking you to rank each song on thematics and lyrics, instrumental and vocal, and maidenosity, although should be pretty straightforward. I have this one three as thematic and lyrics because I don't actually know what the song is about and that kind of takes away from it for me. I like it when maiden songs are very obviously about a thing. I give it a five for instrumental and vocal and a five on maidenosity. - It is super made the point to the point. 355 is exactly the same rating that I had for that one as well. Exactly, for exactly those reasons that you mentioned. Yes, bang on. - All right. We are into wasted years. Like the most pop-friendly maiden song there has ever been in all likelihood. A lot of-- - At least up until this point. - Yeah, yeah, that's true. A lot of fans seem to both love and hate this song. It's got a lot of personal sentiment in it, which isn't necessarily a thing I go to maiden for. But I also understand the idea that Adrian's probably writing this like hot on the heels of having done the power slave tour. - Yeah. - Which like apparently almost broke up the band 'cause it was so long and grueling. And this has that like, you know, the turn the page. - Yes, it's a fucking road song. It's a fucking road song. - Yeah, exactly. And just sort of looking at it. If you step back, you realize that these are the golden years. This is as good as things are going to get for you as a musician, as a person, as, you know, everything that you've dedicated your life to. And it can be easy to lose sight of that. And I find that very evocative. - I agree, like, you know, it's like, there's a million in one road songs. And like, even to like, like, turn like, look, I'm not saying this is a better song than turn the page necessarily. Turn the page is a great song, but it's very direct. And I like the way that there is on the chorus of this. And you know, that points to the board change that happens there as well. The shift over or the dialectic in the writer's mind between like, ah, fuck, I am burnt out on the road. I miss my home, I miss my girlfriend. And then, you know, in the midst of that, the kind of the, you know, this is your or whatever, the idea that you can't waste your time in regret and nostalgia in that moment and need to live in the present so that you don't regret wasting time in the future, right? Like, that's a, you know, that's a legitimately thoughtful and relatively wise and hard-earned sort of position. I think for somebody, you know, to come to. And it's a good idea. - It's also like, it's their sixth album by this point. Like, they are a band who are somewhat seasoned at this scene. - Oh yeah, yeah. And like, Christ, the touring schedule that this band ran, oh my God, like from day one, from day one, it's insane. Yeah, no, it's like, it's a really good single, friend and old co-work of my partners just to karaoke this, like, nobody's this way back in the day. She could really belt this one out. One of the things that really stuck out to me in listening to this record for this exercise, Alex, is the very- - What do you take moment to appreciate how good Adrian's solo is? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - Good. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is great. This is a, this is a track that, and this is an album that I really think points to the very interesting relationship that Maiden have with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal as a concept. And the fact that as one of the progenitors of that sound, we're now at a point where they've been around so long that fine, obviously, they have a bunch of influencer, or they have a bunch of people imitating them, but they've also begun to undergo some real musical changes. Like, this isn't quite confidence rock. It isn't quite power metal as it is going to be fully formed and divided within a year or two of this record coming out. But like, the key change on the chorus is this very classically victorious celebratory one. And I think it's this sort of a template that a lot of bands pick up on, as a successful single for the band, as Iron Maiden being one of the most successful metal bands of their generation, not just as like something they like, not just as like, "Oh, I like Iron Maiden," but hey, pop catchy metal songs of this ilk, it's kind of a market for that, and there's going to continue to be a market for that for much of the 1980s. So I've got this one ranked as four on thematics and lyrics, four on instrumental and vocal, and three on made nocity, because it doesn't totally seem made me to me in a lot of ways. Like, I like it, but it's not necessarily a very maiden-esque thing. How do you have it? Once again, I'm just going to be a broken record and do the exact same thing, 443. That is, I'm not making that up. That is what I had noted down here. So far, we are entirely some patico with our relations to this record so far. Not something I necessarily expected. And again, we don't talk about these things beforehand. - Yes, we don't want to poison each other. - No, no, no. - Each other's groundwater, when it comes to our opinions on these things. Another Adrian Smith number here with Sea of Madness, Bruce, I think that we can agree that the repeated use of the sadness, madness rhyme is not a band's finest lyrical moment. - No. And if we're being really honest, I think that the verses are not super good on this song. I think it's got a good chorus. I really like a lot of the different sections in this song. It sort of like really does, in a lot of ways, point to where they would go on seventh son with these much more elaborate arrangements with lots of different parts and changes and breakdowns and so on and so forth. But this is still when I feel like they're kind of trying to figure that out. And so kind of what you end up with is a dog's breakfast in terms of like the whole, but with lots of parts that I like, which is kind of an unusual place for them to be. - It's, yeah, no, the switching back and forth between, like not just between like the chord changes or whatever, but just like the rhythmic and meter elements of this. Like that weird, I mean, this is an anachronistic thing to say, but like when you listen to that opening, you know, bass riff at the beginning of this song that comes back multiple times throughout, it's just like, it's almost like a primus, like giddy up of just that, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And it's a weird, you're right. On the one hand, it's pointing towards there, like we want to be a progressive metal or a progressive hard rock band that you can hear bits on here and then very much comes into the floor with seventh son. But like the kind of like the boogie thrash of this section right here almost feels like a weird attempt to get back into kind of a lot of the more like kind of boogie-based, like hard rock and butt rock and certainly a lot of British rock of the 1970s of the previous decade. A lot of the stuff that I imagine they would have been listening to in bands that they would have been like, you know, kind of, you know, touring with, you know, all the bands that they would have been touring with and linking that very kind of like, "Ah, we got this one little riff here." And then jumping away from that into your right, these more like ambitious, you know, musical passages on the chorus and whatnot, there is a, there's a disconjunction there. It doesn't always work, but it doesn't always not work either. I will say, on the one hand, Sea of Madness is the, maybe the song that has like the, the least literal connection to either a, you know, mythological, historical or literary event or even just an actual real-world phenomenon. It's one of the biggest songs in terms of what it is, quote, of the out. But I do like-- - It's not about a literal Sea of Madness. - No. - It's, you know, a thing that you sometimes do get in a lot of maintenance. - Oh, no, right, I'm in the ancient mariners, literally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - A little song called "Fear of the Dark." It is about being afraid of the dark. - Yes, ghosts of the navigator are literally, yes, yeah. But I do like the idea of the whole life. - This section is really nice. - It's great, it's great. I get, like, this, yeah, this is the thing. Like, it sits at such, a passage like this is at such dis, you know, disjunction with like the little threshy boogie part that I'm talking about here. It doesn't totally altogether, but I appreciate the effort. I do like the whole kind of like insanity and depression are the natural normal responses to experiencing the world as it is, theme of this, and then the corresponding experience of those responses is effectively akin to an exile from society, right? Like, you know, the fact that the narrator just, you know, cannot really go to it, cannot attend to the voices, the other people suffering in this world because of that theme of Exodus that obviously "Stranger in a Strange Land" is going to refer to as well a little bit later on. This is almost like a more serious version, if I could say it, of Douglas Adams's like recurring theme of just the pure horrifying chaos resting at the center of everything that our science and philosophy tries to release. It's almost like a sociological cosmic horror rather than like a philosophical or a scientific one in the Lovecraftian sense. Like, if you just actually try to hold to the logic of this society, you will go mad and you will be broken by it, you know, which I mean, that's a cynical point of view, perhaps, but it's one I can certainly relate to. Yeah, I mean, I'm also gonna say this has some hokey-ass lyrics. You know, out in the street, somebody's crying, out in the night the fires burn, maybe tonight somebody's crying, reached the point of no return. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And as I noted, the sadness, madness rhyme, which I just don't, I think it's real hokey. It's not, you know, I'm not 100% clear if Adrian writes the lyrics to his songs or whether those do go back to Steve or Bruce. I've always gotten the sense that like the writing credits are the writing credits 'cause there's almost never any delineation between them on any maiden song or any on any maiden album. I mean, that's Steve writes lyrics to his songs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you would think that they would credit somebody. But anyway, if we are talking about this one, I'm giving this one a two on thematics and lyrics 'cause it's too vague. I will give it a probably a three on instrumental and made naucity, I'm gonna give it a three. I like this one a little bit. I'm varying from you a little bit. I'm giving the theme a three because again, I do like the way that the extended poetic metaphor of the sea as representation of society that works a little bit for me. Just, you know, look, I have a, whatever, I have, you know, I was a kid who wore puffy shirts and read a lot of Byron and everything like that in high school. So I got a soft spot for that. So I'm going three on three, but then also three on musicality and maidenness as well for the same sorts of reasons. We are now into heaven, can't wait. Fuck, yes. This is, I just, I fucking love this song. So goddamn much, this is my favorite song on this record from just the noodling over the simple synth bed that you were getting there at the beginning to this little, you know, drum fill here to the whole way, the whole way for it. I fucking love everything about heaven and weight. Yeah. I think between this. A great Steve Harris, like just, once again, you know, the most made-me songs are the Harris ones for obvious reasons, but this is like just a major marker for that kind of distinction. It's also, I think, you know, I'm trying to remember when I would have sat down and really understood like kind of the chronology of maiden, just like, ah, I like these maiden songs. But I think between this track and wasted years, plus to a degree, the next track, you really have to acknowledge or what comes into the fore, especially if you're listening to this record right after Power Slave, you have to acknowledge the real sense of like uplift and melodic hope that is coming into maiden as a band with this record and that obviously 7th son is going to carry on with, right? Like this absolutely triumphant, you know, sort of chorus that we get here, which, you know, very much matches up with the lyrics that we can get to in a minute. It's a real like just swashbuckling, adventurous, ha ha, you know, like, you know, snatching, you know, victory from the jaws of defeat. Sort of instrumentation on the chorus here that I just fucking love. - Yeah, yeah, I really love this one too. It is, you know, as I said, just a perfect sort of, you know, Steve Harris type song. And it's one of those super literal songs that we were just talking about. I mean, the title isn't about the thing. If it was, it would just be called "Near Death Experience." (laughing) It is, you know, a song about near-death experiences. It's not based on the classic film or the remake. It's just basically borrowing the titles of those in order to express the idea of like, I did not, you know, go on into the afterlife because, you know, that can wait, I wanna live. But all the lyrics are basically just describing the things that people talk about with near-death experiences, you know, seeing yourself above, floating above your body, seeing a tunnel of light, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think the thing that I love about this one is that, you know, oftentimes it does feel like, you know, just, you know, Steve found like a good riff or a good hook and then just went back and found something for the song to be about. In his notebook of things, he was like, interested in at any given time, historical incident, you know, supernatural phenomenon, et cetera, et cetera, vaguely poetic idea that he had. And so, the actual, like, the weirdness of this one is that, thematically, heaven can wait is... I almost don't know that, necessarily, the lyrics match up to the feel of the song 'cause it is such a fist-pumping, like, yeah, yeah. And you could interpret that as being like, a life is so kick-ass, and of course, I don't wanna die and go on into the afterlife. But I also just find that, like, the lack of any sort of, like, sinister, supernatural-ness, a bit weird in some senses, but, you know, I can't argue with it, it just works. Also, this has such a wicked, good chant along. Oh, my God, this fucking scorpions football club chant that goes on right here, just absolutely. Yeah, this is great. It's funny. This song is kind of like... - This was just some guys they met in a bar. - Oh, is it really? - Yeah, yeah, they actually put a reference to the bar that they met these guys in in the cover art. - Oh, no, shit. - It is also kick-ass, but... - The cover art is like, yeah, the cover art is itself. You could have, like, if I was a teenager in the '80s and, like, you know, spoken joints in my brother's, you know, my older brother's bedroom, I would have spent hours trying to decode all of the stuff on the LP sleeve for this. But no, yeah, just this, like, y'all, like, this is a song that I think, like, almost, we can anticipate what they're gonna do with fear in the dark, you know, of a few years later on. But, yeah, this is just a classic, classic chant breakdown section here. I love that part so much. To your point about the lyrical theme of it, I kind of disagree. I think the theme really works for me because, for me, I've always taken it as a, like, not just, like, ha, I'm alive, but it is, like, it is that celebration of life or it's that celebration of cheating death in the moment for today. Like, you're fucking right, I am going to die someday, but today is not that day. And it's interesting because the-- - Maybe, but not today. - Maybe, yes, exactly, you know, that the house of duress will one day, yes. The clairvoyant is musically very similar to this song, but is effectively a lyrical inversion of it, right? In that, you know, the theme of that song being, as soon as you're born, you are dying, that that is the paradox of life, right? So to live is to burn out the candle, to suck up what oxygen and brief time that you have on here, right? And that's the paradox of it. This being the opposite of it, and it being so similar musically to the clairvoyant, I think is something really interesting, right? That just, that brush with death reinvigorates you and prompts you to live more. And it gives you that sense of like, real joe de viv to spit in the face of death. Also, again, like, the clairvoyant is low key, my favorite iron maiden song of all time. So seeing this is kind of a weird test run, but also inversion of it, is something that has always drawn me to it once you actually bought out, again, the historical, the threat of the band is on at this point. - Yeah, yeah, I mean, I just, it is an extremely kick-ass song in a lot of ways. I just, the near-death experience thing always feels a little weird to me, you know, for the reasons that I stated earlier. But that's not enough to like, sink the song for me. If I'm ranking this one, I am looking at this one from the perspective of probably like a four on thematic, 'cause I like very literal iron maiden songs, five on instrumental, five on maidenosity. It's an easy one. - Yeah, that's the same for me. Like, the theme is not quite as perfect as it's going to be on the clairvoyant, so it's the, I mean, I would go 4.5, probably, if I could, but if we are sticking to literal numbers. - Yeah, then if we're going to whole numbers, yeah, four on theme, five music, five mean. Just like, musically, it is everything that I fucking love about this band. It's everything that I realized for, you know, full disclosure here. Alex, I think we've talked about this on off-talk, podcast, bombers, I'm not sure. Alex and I both kind of came to a realization that maiden, iron maiden kicks fucking ass very comparatively late in our lives. Like, we were not, we were not like 11 year old kids playing Dungeons and Dragons and listening to power slate. You know, like, that was not what we were listening to. When we were reading dragon lion's novels and doing all the stereotypes of nerdy shit that, you know, kind of geeky kids into science fiction and fantasy are listening to when they're indulging and all of that, it took a long time to sort of go like, no, wait a minute, iron maiden kicks fucking ass and it's exactly tunes like this that I'm glad that I discovered in my late 20s or whenever it was that prompted to turn around in my understanding of the band. - Yes. Before we get into talking about what is probably Bruce, my favorite, like Iron Maiden deep cut. Like, it's certainly a top five song for me, loneliness the long distance runner, which is fortunately quite long. I didn't want to tell folks to go check out the excellent website, the iron maiden commentary. It's just iron maiden commentary.com. An exhaustive fan site that features notes on every single song in the entire catalog, as well as extensive links to interviews, transcriptions of audio commentaries that various members of the band have done at some various points, all the lyrics, delineation of solos, writing credits, technical details, all kinds of different stuff. And one of the great things about that is if you go to somewhere in time, it gives you just a breakdown of every single detail that Derek Riggs worked into. - Yeah. - The cover art. So that includes the fact that it has, you know, he snuck the message, this is a very boring painting into the background over it. - Yes, yeah, yeah. - Because apparently it took them a long time. But the fact that the, you know, the digital clock on it says, you know, 2358, two minutes to midnight. There's a reference to West Ham, seven Arsenal three, various bars and pubs that the band liked, including the rainbow, an aces high bar, Bruce, as well as the Ruskin Arms public house, the Marquis Club. There's a reference to Phantom of the Opera. - There's multiple play runner references including the Bradbury building itself. - Yeah. - And ancient mariners, seafood restaurants. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, we are into the chorus now of "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner." I love this Bruce, I love it so much. It is in fact on my long distance running playlist for obvious reasons. But I think the thing that really strikes me about this one is that when it transitions from that super gallopy, fast verse into the chorus, it just has that feeling of like pure emotion that grabs me just so. The way that it hits me is that, you know, okay, one theme that Maiden touches on all the time is, you know, going back to like the prisoner and stuff like that is just sort of like, you know, freedom, freedom from society, freedom from the rules and expectations that are being placed on you. And the song is inspired by a book which I think has been adapted into a film multiple times on the long distance runner about a young juvenile offender who is being basically allowed to run in a long distance race in the hope that it will bring some prestige to like the institution of that he has been sort of incarcerated in. And the end of the story is he throws the race 'cause he realizes that he would rather embarrass the people who are holding him down than win a race to no actual benefit to himself. And that to me is a super made me theme and I think they just captured that idea so much. Also, this is another track that has solos from both Adrian and Dave. They're very close together. In fact, I think Adrian only plays for like, you know, eight bars and then Dave takes over but both solos kick ass. The fucking the solo that's gonna come in here in like 10 seconds is just again for me. Like that's what fucking power metal sounds like in my head just this very clean. It's gonna start right here. (upbeat music) Yeah, that's power metal to me. In my head, right there, that's it. - Is that big sort of uplifting like, yeah. - Yeah, and again, like this is this in comparison to Sea of Madness where there's a disjunction between those things. I think that Rhapsodic, whatever you wanna sort of say, back and forth between just the grind and the desperation and the futility of just running for miles and miles and miles and miles with, you know, seemingly no destination or no end to it. And then just the actual like the runner is high that you get from doing that coming in here. I've always wondered if the BPM would be a little bit difficult to actually like run, you know, run to when you're like two thirds of the way through a marathon, but I won't. - I don't try and match the pace of the song. I just let it motivate me. And, you know, there is something extremely poetic in the idea of the loneliness of the long runner. It is a solitary pursuit, even in a crowd of other runners who are by yourself in your own head. And there is, you know, I mean, I always listen to podcasts or music when I am running, but, you know, that's to distract me from being alone inside my own head on the occasions when, which I am listening to neither of those things and just running. There is a very specific sort of like, yep, just alone with your own thoughts and nothing to distract you, just, yeah. - To the point about the theme of this, it is, it is. And to the point about that theme and the inspiration for it, I think that's something that I really appreciate more and more the more years I spend with Maiden, both the new catalog and the old catalog. On the one hand, it's kind of easy to sort of at times, you know, take a pot shot at, whether it's Harris or Dickinson or whatever, certainly like Bruce Dickinson's whole, like, ah, a whole song about a particular airship, you know, that, you know, we're gonna detail the specs of and everything like that. You know, Bruce Dickinson-- - Sabbathon sitting in the front row taking notes-- - Yes, exactly, exactly. On the one hand, it's easy to kind of go like, that's so specific and nerdy, but I love the fact that often Maiden will like reach for themes or inspirations that they think are interesting or productive, but are not just like, I don't know, it's some wizards killing shit or like, I don't know, big-titted balconies or whatever, like, hey, here's a movie from eight years back about HG Wells. Hey, isn't it darkly ironic that Robin Williams struggled with depression? Hey, here's a short story about running as a means of self-definition and defiance of the British class and penal systems. Like, you can say that that's a bit hammy or awkward or whatever and find that's okay, but it is not just the dumb, oh-fish, I don't know, it's songs about trolls and tanks and shit. Sort of thing that I think a lot of people assume Maiden have and like, whether or not they execute what you think that book or that movie sounds like in your head or whether music like this resonates with you in terms of how a person going through that situation would actually feel fine. We can disagree about that, but I always have to take my hat off for their ability to kind of reach for those lesser known or less obvious points of inspiration. To your scoring system, I have that. What times across the board? This one, I got it at four on the music. I really like the double lead on it, the double leads that come in. It's, again, it's a great linking of the classic, like, you know, number of the beast era of Maiden with the later stuff. Four for the theme and five for Maidenosity for me. All right, cool. We are getting into Stranger in a Strange Land, which, as you may have figured out if you've ever listened to lyrics, is probably not in any way inspired by the Robert Heinlein story. Or the Bible, no. Or the Bible. It is essentially about a story that Adrian Smith wrote about an Arctic expedition in which a bunch of people died. Apparently, Adrian later met one of the people from that expedition who told him that he had become an Iron Maiden fan after hearing that the song was inspired by this guy's experience. Wait, the people who dug up the crew-- No, one of the people on the expedition. Like, it wasn't an old expedition from, you know, the 1800s or something, but-- OK, because I've always taken this to be inspired by-- because, like, the person who has lost, you know, on this expedition is later excavated and dug up, you know, kind of rediscovered, kind of in the third verse. So I've always-- We view the comments here from the Iron Maiden commentary. It is apparently based on a real expedition. Adrian Smith was inspired to write the song after talking to one of the survivors who ended up becoming an Iron Maiden fan. OK, interesting, interesting. Because, like, I've always taken the fact that, like, the third verse, 100 years of gone, and men again that came that way to find the answer to the mystery, they found his body lying where it fell on that day, preserved in time for all-- I mean, maybe it-- you know, there's a vagueness to it, and it could be one of the people who's on the expedition who found him. Who knows? I've always-- because, like, there is-- I can't remember the name of it, the name of the expedition, but there was a Northwest Passage expedition that is the-- kind of the basis for, like, the frozen caveman lawyer sort of shit and whatnot, where the perfectly preserved body of a crewman that had been frozen for 138 years was dug up in, like, 1971 or 1972, or something like that. And you can see photos of it. It's quite horrific, but also fascinating to see, like, yeah, the guy's eyes are still there. Still has, like, his hair and flesh and all of that is still intact on a body that's just been in-- right off of Baffin Island, basically, Alex. It's up there in Nunavut. Real quick here. This is another single from the album. This is the-- it's a weird choice for a single to me. It's a super weird choice for a single. I have to imagine that it's almost as-- it's, like, kind of a boogie rock kind of people to it that might, you know, they thought, might get on the radio, although they've never had a radio single. They've never been that man. So you're right. It's a very strange single in that way. Have you ever seen the cover art for the single? Yes, I have, which has nothing to do with the song either, right? It's just, like, a super sick, like, you know, Eddie as cowboys/Rick Deckard Bounty Hunter going into a bar that is half-blade runner, half-star wars. Yeah, I don't know what to make of that. So a small paragraph on the back of the single, basically, is super kick-ass. And as no doubt, inspired all manner of Eddie Fanfic over the years, the Android, with no name, walked into the crowded spaceport bar, eight-foot tall with death in his cold Android eyes, he strode across the room, small green aliens scuttled out of his path. Fearsome Martian warriors would not meet his gaze and the air froze when he croaked in his dark, gravely voice. A pint of bitter, please, mate. That's a meaty baby. That is pretty fucking made. That's-- you see, that's always more made than the actual song for me, but yeah. I'm not a big fan of this one, to be honest. Yeah, I-- you know, I'm not either. I've always thought that a single edit, if you could have somehow made a single edit of "Heaven Can Wait," that would have been the more logical choice for a second single from this record. Something about the singing and the chords on the actual main chorus of this just never aligns for me, it's almost like the actual main chorus almost feels like the descending minor progression of like a pre-verse in a more epic song, like "Alexander the Great," or even the intro on a more heavier metal song, like the beginning of a, I don't know, like a "Hello, Wait Spice" layer, just a ♪ Don't dare ♪ ♪ No, no, no, no, no, no ♪ Like that's sort of a descending progression. Like that's like, okay, that's a little introduction, that kind of, you know, minor chord introduction before we get to the actual, like, thrashing or rocking. And that's all the chorus of this song is. So yeah, it's never really worked for me that much. Yeah, I mean, if we're using my ranking system here, I'm giving it, I think, a three-on somatics because it's about a real thing, and that's, you know, I like those kinds of maiden songs. Instrumentally, I'm not super fussy about the melody. I don't find the arrangement super compelling. You know, I'm not super big on the boogie rock feel. Instrumentally, I'll give it a three because it's competent enough. I don't dislike it, and made "Nocity" a three just because, yeah, it's made me, but it's not a specially great made-me song. It is, you know, average at best. Yeah, no, I'm pretty similar with you. I got it as a four-on theme, two-on music, and a three-on maiden, made "Nocity." Yeah. Yeah, you know, and it's also like a Smith's last song written on the album, and from here on out, we're going to have songs that are written by Murray and Harris and then Harris, and not like, I can see why they buried it this deep in the record, although releasing it as single, I just do not get at all. In fact, I would pick almost any other song if you put it up against "Stranger" and "Stranger" and I had it on the record with the possible exception of "Sea of Madness." But with that said, another one of those songs by Irn Maiden that is just about the thing that is... (laughs) Yes, yes. This is deja vu. So I have weirdly mixed feelings about deja vu, Bruce. On the one hand, I really like the fact that it is a down-the-pipe-maiden song. You know, Murray doesn't write a ton of maiden songs, like "The Lion's Sheriff's Harris" and "Smith" in this era, and so when Murray comes in, I oftentimes feel, and because this is a Murray and Harris co-write, I almost feel like he came up with like an idea, a riff and maybe something else, and Harris came in and punched it up with him to make it a maiden song, but there's something weirdly stalk about it as kind of fathers we were. Every single part feels like it could just be like from any given maiden song, and despite the fact that maiden is a band that is so distinctive where you just hear something, you just go, yep, maiden maiden maiden, even if it's another band playing, you're just like, oh, that's a maiden style, you know, double lead, or that's a maiden style bass line, or that's a maiden style, you know, chorus, or a maiden style, you know, whatever, solo. They are very good at not having that be boring. They're very good at doing unexpected things oftentimes and going into places you're not necessarily expecting, especially in this era, when they were really expanding their musical palette in every way. This is the song that almost feels like a throwback to an earlier era, like going back to power slave, or even not quite number of the beast, but you know what I'm saying, you know, maybe piece of mind, maybe like closer to the end of piece of mind, but anyway, with that said, I like it because it is a very maideny maiden song, but it is not a very like exceptional maiden song. - Yeah, no, I have the same thoughts. Like the opening, musically, it's okay. Like the opening portion and the main, like this like kind of aces/two minutes style, like double lead that you're hearing right now, that's pretty great, but that's kind of all there is to this song musically, and-- - I would not be surprised to find out that this is like the one part that Murray wrote, and then Harris was like, oh, where's the rest of the song? - Yes, and there isn't much of the rest of the song, and lyrically, this one is just so thin and dopey that like, I think I like it more than "Stranger in a Strange Light," but I think it's the weakest or thinnest song on the record. Like, and again, you're like, we were talking a minute ago about "Fear of the Dark," and like, look, a good song and Bruce Dickinson really selling you on it can work with something as basic and common as, "The Dark is Scary" when you've got the right lyrics and just a little bit of verve, just a little bit of juzh, in those lyrics. But this song here is, if you look at the lyrics sheet, it is just a basic description of the stock experience of deja vu in a completely basic and unremarkable way. - You see familiar faces, but you don't remember where they're from, Bruce. - Isn't it strange? Like, it's literally like if you asked a person on the street to describe deja vu, you would get the lyrics to the song. And look, we're gonna test the limits in a minute of just how hard you can sell a basic encyclopedic description of a phenomenon or a person in a couple of minutes. But this here just does not work. And I know that the band has said that like, we didn't intend for this to be a concept record about time, but this is the one that kind of has me raised my eyebrows about that, like, okay, we have a song about time travel, one about being frozen in time. We have one epic about history. We have one song about your own personal relationship with the passage of your own life. Uh, what else is there to write a song about that has something to do with time? Uh, deja vu's the thing that we all have. So sure, fine, here we go. Yeah, no, so, um, musically, like, I don't hate this one. Like, I'll give it a three musically just for those, like, double leads. They're just like, hey, do you like A society? Like, do you want something tonight? Yeah, there you go, great. And you're right, it is entirely, like, it is a very fucking maiden song. Like, there's no mistaking this for any other band. I'm gonna get a bit of four on maidenosity. - Yeah, I'm giving it a four on maidenosity because the thing that it keeps it from being a five is that there's nothing unexpected about it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But thematically and lyrically, this is a one for me. This is just, this is like, you know, this is like the spinal tap level of just like when a metal band or a hard rock band thinks they're saying something profound and just is not. - I'm giving it a two because of my affection for very literal Iron Maiden songs. But you're right, it's stupid, it's uninspired, it's thin as fuck, but I just happen to enjoy when Iron Maiden songs are just about it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Especially when it's like kind of a broad topic, but we will be hearing the exact fucking opposite of that in just a few short seconds, my friends. Bruce, you're a Monty Python fan. - I am indeed. - You're familiar, of course, with Oliver Cromwell. - Oh, Lord Protector of England, yes. - Yes, born in 1559 Dines, or whatever, 1659 Dine, 1658. - September. - Yeah. - September. It's just John Kleece singing an encyclopedia article about Oliver Cromwell, essentially. - In a terrible off-key warble. - Yeah. - Yes, there is no terrible off-key warble in this, but this is essentially just singing a song that is in a cyclopedia entry about Alexander the Great to the point where later versions of this record actually put his birth and death date to his title. - I know, I know. - It's not on the original sleeve, but later re-issues have had Alexander the Great open parentheses, 356 to 323 BC closed parentheses. Fucking ridiculous, awesome, awesome, awesome. - This is a real, like you can't, the whole judging this one on the scale thing doesn't even make sense because it is entirely what it says on the tin, and it's what it says on the tin for eight and a half minutes. Oh, before we move any further, the opening line, like my son, fine for the thine-owned kingdom for that, which I leave to you is too small, credited to Alexander's father, Philip of Macedon, but probably entirely apocryphal and mythological and not anything that he would have ever said. To his son, you have the theory floating around that Alexander even arranged for his father's own assassination to try to consolidate Nicodontian rule over Greece and then start or expand, rather, the empire that he would expand upon. A whole lot, what I find interesting if we're getting into kind of the theme of this, I like that there is a specific focus on the larger kind of Greco-Persian wars that runs throughout this, and specifically detailing a lot of these smaller lands and kingdoms that kind of had to pick their poison in terms of aligning with or being conquered by one of the larger superpowers of Alexander's Greece or Persia, I don't know, that's interesting to me, and I think that that is something that certainly Dickinson is obviously going to return to as a songwriter years later in terms of the military themes that the band gets into. - I mean, this is a Harris composition. - I know, I know, I know, but it paves the way for that sort of, I don't know, I'd have to look at the, I'd have to really dig into it, but I kind of feel like there weren't nearly as many like military theme maiden songs at this point as they would go on to have in later years. - There's a lot of big ones, a lot of their most popular songs from earlier than before. - Trooper and Ace's High, yeah. - Yes, exactly, die with your boots on. - I mean, I also, slightly spicy take here. You know, like I've said, "cept and son" is my favorite album, but under the right moments, in the right moments, a matter of life and death might be my second favorite maiden record, so I really like, my point is I really, really like really long, military themed maiden epics, but I will say, like-- - Like them dale and so forth. - Yes, yeah, all of that stuff, all of that stuff. There are a couple of good licks and riffs in the instrumentals of this song, but it's a little bit repetitive, and I do think that kind of like Rime of the Ancient Mariner before it, it does sometimes collapse under its own weight. I think that they kind of got a little bit better, a lot better at writing these sorts of epics on the other side of the Blaze Veily years, like once, you know, Brave New World happens, from that point onward, they knock out like two or three of these songs for record, and they fucking kill it. There's some good stuff in this, but at times, it does feel a little bit ponderous to me, I have to say. - I disagree, I like every single moment of this song. I like that long, portentous intro, that intro script. - The intro script. - The main sort of motif, musical motif of the song. I like the verse, I like the chorus a lot, I enjoy this breakdown, I enjoy these three separate solos, two by Adrian, one by Dave. I like the fact that Bruce is just leanin' in, seeing these insane, just like, how, they were playing this on the most recent tour, Bruce. Can you imagine fucking, you know, 60 something year old, Bruce Dickinson, having to be up there? Well, it's probably like close to 70 at this point, Jesus, up there on stage, having to remember to sing like King Darius III, defeated, led Persia, the Scythians, fell by the river of Jack Sartis, then Egypt fell to the Massandod King, as well as he founded the city of Alexander. - He came the way for Christian. - He came the way for Christian. - Yeah, like, I imagine he spent a lot of time memorizing this motherfucker. Man, some good solos here. - Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the little, yes, yeah, the kind of, again, the kind of the Prague medal like halftime breakdown on this is good, yep, yep. And of course, you know, as a historical figure, Alexander will always be held up as sort of like this, this, you know, classic sort of, you know, conqueror, because he is much closer to mythology than say Caesar is, where we have a lot more actual history to really trace what happened in Caesar's lifetime, because the Romans were a lot better about, you know, preserving that stuff from the Greeks were. And, you know, there's so much mythology around Alexander that it's kind of a more fertile ground for Maiden to draw from. Although, if you once again go to Iron Maiden commentary and just look up like the right up on this particular song, it is just like a fucking 10-page-work long scroll of just like various notes about each of the lines of the song, including historical inaccuracies that pop up in it. And, you know, I appreciate the fact that there are people who are willing to put that so much work into the song. - Tell your story, tell your story, yeah, yeah. - The first exposure that I had to this song was when I was in high school, a history class, and we were doing a segment on the ancient Greeks, a unit on the ancient Greeks in grade 11 history. And my teacher, in an attempt to like reach the kids, brought in this record and put on this song, he was not a metal guy by any of this stretch of the imagination, so this was very much a, I'm gonna try and reach these kids on their own level, not understanding that by this time, this was already like 10 years in the past that this record had come out, and none of the kids were interested at all in Iron Maiden or Heavy Men, with the exception of like one or two hesser kids who were not in that class 'cause it was French immersion. It was just a very strange experience of like a bunch of kids having to sit there in a classroom listing the song for like eight minutes, and him like handing out a piece of paper with all of the lyrics written out on it, it's sort of like, you see, this way rocks pretty hard and everybody just sort of be like, I don't, I, what? It's just a very vivid memory for me for a lot of reasons, both misguided forms of teaching, also the fact that now like I can say that that happened and it's kind of a kick-ass story that we have to tell. - Oh, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely is. I have one high school teacher who tried to like connect with me over my interest in things like, you know, Slayer, Fear Factory, and Marilyn Manson by talking about his love for Iron Maiden, which I was not interested in when I was 14 years old, but I am glad that years and years and years later, you and I are able to break bread over and toast regularly while listening to Maiden here. Very quickly here for Alexander the Great itself, I'm gonna go with the, oh fine, I'll go four musically, fourth matically, but five on Maidenocity. - I'm going five, five, five. - So with that said, I have fed all of these numbers into a spreadsheet, which has now given us the average for the album based entirely on the individual ratings per song, rounding up to a non-decimal number, it would be a four out of five total for the record. That works for me, I'm fine with that. You have been listening to We Have a commentary and I die you die dot com bonus podcast, kindly supported by our back is at patreon.com. My name is Alex Kennedy. - Mine is Bruce Lord. Thanks very much for listening everyone up the irons. - Peace of mind. (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]