Top 15 played Artists from 2013-2014

Well it's been just over a year since I first published a similar list. This is done using my Last.FM profile. The list has changed quite a bit, but that is probably because I have started using Last.FM more in order to keep track on what I have been listening to. Well enjoy.

1. The Dear Hunter
2. SepticFlesh
3. Joe Hisaishi
4. Samael
5. Rammstein
6. HAM
7. Antonio Vivaldi
8. Queensryche
9. Marillion
10. Bruce Dickinson
11. Long Distance Calling
12. Iron Maiden
13. Fjoergyn
14. David Bowie
15. Devin Townsend

Lasting Impact: Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of The Seventh Son

Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of the Seventh Son

Iron Maiden is without a doubt my number one favourite band. They are the only band that I am willing to buy an album when it comes out. I've already written on blog regarding an album of theirs that is close to my heart.

Now from memory rather coffee stained memory I seemed to have gone into their career a little backwards, or sideways or hub-wards. The first song I remember hearing was the phenomenal Aces High, the first album I owned was Live After Death (In cassette form!) but the first studio album I owned was Fear of the Dark. Which I really really liked, but it somehow didn't feel like the Iron Maiden I first knew. So I left it for a little bit. Sometime somewhere someone gave me a VHS copy of Made in England which was filmed during their Seventh Tour of the Seventh Tour. And boy, oh man did those spandex trousers left quite an impression and not in a good way.  But the songs. The songs were so so very very very good. There isn't enough wax for me to wax lyrically or poetically about this album but I shall try my best.

Bruce Dickinson and 80's spandex

Then I got this single given:

Can I Play With Madness

Which had two songs from an album I had not listened to by Iron Maiden. That album? Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. The best and one of the perfect albums of heavy metal. It would not be unfair to say that their creative talents had peaked considerably when they put out this album. That is not to say that all the albums that followed were shit... just not as good. I know there are people now probably shouting at the screen mentioning various names but I would argue that they haven't released a bad album, they've done some awful songs but not whole album full of them.  But Seventh Son of a Seventh Son is just completely different. It is the perfect mixture of Wow! and Woah!

For those who don't know. This was Iron Maiden's seventh studio album, they were at their peak in terms of albums sales and touring relentlessly. They were at the top of their game. These guys had been touring together for 6 years at this point. They had released the rather odd Somewhere in Time, which has their best album cover though, which had featured fairly heavily synthesizers but had not really fully incorporated them. But on this one they completely embraced them and put them to great use.

Apparently Steve Harris had been reading Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card. And with Bruce Dickinson's interest in history and Aleister Crowley in particular it was only a matter of time when this would collide. Them two spoke for a while and then decided to make a concept album about the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.

The story follows a boy who is the seventh son of the seventh son(Betcha didn't see that one coming). In Moonchild he is being born and there is a fight going on between the Devil and an Angel regarding who's path he will follow. Throughout his life he struggles with his dreams, his visions and generally his life seems to be going down the drain. Fast. He tries, but in the end can't live with the burden. So the album ends on a cheerful note called Only the Good Die Young.

To be honest the concept went right over my head, still does in fact, but the music is impeccable.  As a concept album it is really rather weak, nowhere near like say Operation Mindcrime or Christ.O or Brave. But what it does have a common musical thread running through all of the songs. There are two songs that are blatantly commercial namely Can I Play With Madness and The Evil that Men Do, but they are great. And the former has a video that features Graham Chapman! Apparently the former also started of as a ballad, and listening to it I don't understand how, but the latter could have very easily been a power ballad. But both are equally hard rocking and headbangable.

 

Then you've got the prog element that has always been there. To be honest regarding long proggy songs the best one they've ever done is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. But the title song is an atmospheric masterpiece, but it's by no means the only prog song there, the other contender for prog-metal song on here is Infinite Dreams which has one of the most interesting guitar playing and very unusual song structure, considering that most of the time when they write songs they try to make sure that that the audience can sing along. But that is pretty hard with this one. But it's a great song though and you can feel for the character and the psychosis that is plaguing him. It sorts of meanders from being a power ballad to a fully fledged metal song towards the end with those patented Iron Maiden dual guitar attacks that are just so so very wonderful to listen to. 

With all of this you also get Steve Harris galloping bass playing. I've yet to hear anyone else play the bass like he does, it is quite wonderful to listen to especially when he goes off on one like on The Clairvoyant which for a long long time was my favourite song from this album. Not sure which is my favourite song right now because whenever I put this album on I have to listen to it from start to finish. Each song individually is ranging from great to greatness, but listening to them all in sequence from start to finish just adds that oh so extra special layer on top of all of them. Bit like a smear of Mr. Vikki's BBQ sauce does for ham sandwiches.

Bruce Dickinson goes out of his way to show why he is one of the best voices to come from that Heavy Metal Era (Still has one of the best voices in fact) and mesmerises completely throughout and keeps you captivated in the story that isn't all there. He shows why he's called the Air-Raid Siren with gusto and puts his history degree into good use when writing his lyrics.

Dave Murray and Adrian Smith are the dual guitar players that every other guitar pair, it was such a loss when Adrian left. Though that is not a slight on Janick. But thank the Gods that both Bruce and Adrian returned and kept Janick.

The album ends with the same acoustic ditty and sinister words by Bruce Dickinson (Which he borrowed from the aforementioned Aleister Crowley) that it started with:

Seven deadly sins
Seven ways to win
Seven holy paths to hell
And your trip begins
Seven downward slopes
Seven bloodied hopes
Seven are your burning fires
Seven your desires

They still haven't bettered this album, though Dance of Death came pretty close.

So for people's enjoyments I'll share the album in two different formats.

Lasting Impact: Marillion - This Strange Engine.

I might have talked about before how this one particular VHS influenced my musical appreciation, it was a Kerrang Heavy Metal Kompilation. On it were such heavy metal luminaries as Iron Maiden, Queensryche, Armoured saint and... uhhh... Marillion. Yes Marillion, the progressive luminaries who started out as pretty much like a Genesis tribute band. The song by them that was on this video was a wonderful ode to paranoia called 'He Knows You Know'. Which is a very unusually short and commercial song by them, especially considering that it was when Fish(nee Derek William Dick) leading them. I, of course wasn't to know that he had quit and had been replaced when I came across a CD called 'This Strange Engine', which was being sold in my home towns shop. This was in 1997. I was expecting some rather heavy progressive heavy metal album only due to that song I had heard from Kerrang!

So I was just a little bit shocked when the first song was more of an epic sing-a-long song, 'Man of A Thousands Faces'! With acoustic guitars, piano's, choirs, EPIC CHORUSES! Loved it immediately, but by the goodness of the Metal Gods this was too much lack of metal, but I stuck with it. Then the next one is a bit of AOR pop, 'One Fine Day', still my favourite song of the album, but by Joe it's not metal. The lyrics as always from Marillion are great, this one ponders on our longing just for that one fine day to appear while we work and work and work, hoping that it will all be better when we retire. In the meantime the rain just keeps on pouring, but then when it all does turn out for the best we still don't want to believe it. Cue a rather nifty guitar solo from Steve Rothery.

Now there's a guitar player who hasn't received the accolades and attention he really truly deserves, bit like Andreas Kisser of Sepultura. His way of playing is rather understated, but full of melody. He seems to go for the less is more approach and never overstays his welcome, but he always adds to the music. Though you'd hardly notice him there when he's there, the hole would be greatly felt if he left.  The songs 'One Fine Day', 'Estonia' and '80 Days' show just how good he is.

The other highlight is of course Steve Hogarth, the man who replaced Fish. He's got a much warmer and melodious singing voice than Fish. Suppose the only thing he hasn't got that Fish did was a rather brilliant word play in the lyrics. But Steve doesn't need to pun his songs, he just writes great stories in lyrical form which on the whole is more interesting than punning. Steve has now been with Marillion for longer then Fish, and released more albums. And although I do like the the Fish Era albums, I still prefer Hogarth's period. For example on the song 'Memory of Water', where Steve has to carry the tune pretty much on his own, I doubt that Fish could have done the same thing.

Now finally after such a long wait, finally we have a metal song! In the guise of 'An Accidental Man' though to be fair it's not really. It's the hardest song on the album and would qualify as a hard rock song, but heavy metal? Maybe in the 70's possibly in the 80's.

What is probably most evident from this album is that there's a strong focus on making songs that the audience can sing along to. But unfortunately that sort of fails a little bit with 'Hope for the Future', it's not a particularly bad song. It just pales a lot in comparison to the rest. It does have some great up lifting lyrics like the rest(bar Memory of Water and This Strange Engine), but on the whole it is probably the only song that can be truly called ordinary(take that Allmusic) on here.

The pinnacle of the album though is the title song, which is an ode to all of those 70's prog rock bands. It goes through nearly all the emotions you can go through. Mark Kelly can finally take centre stage with some great Rick Wakeman-like keyboard flourishes and solo's, Rothery goes ballistic going through his guitar pedals and changing the guitar tone several times, Hogarth goes all falsetto on us, Ian Mosley and Pete Trewavas do all they can to keep up, hold up and show up wherever and whenever they can! There's the expectation that this will all crumble any minute, but the song finishes just as it all should but doesn't. After 15 minutes.



To be honest I was a little shocked at the time when I listened to the album, I was not that enchanted back then, besides Man of a Thousand Faces and One Fine Day, I could just leave the rest. But it kept on coming back, the album that is. And as I've grown older I've started appreciating it more and more. So this blog is written with my 30 year old ears, but using the memories of my 14 year old self.

The love of prog sort of seems to stem from this album. It is not my favourite by Marillion, no that would be Anoraknophobia. The to be honest as well the prog scene is a minefield to walk through, especially when your standard is the song and not the instrument-masturbation-ship. Which is were Marillion is king, the manage to make proggy songs, but without draining your interest in the song itself.