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.

Musical upbringing and influences

Suppose most of you will know me as a purveyor of heavier music. Which strictly speaking is true. I do listen to a lot of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, though I tend to splash that with healthy amount of Classical FM and BBC Radio 3, along with Johnny Cash and Townes Van Zandt. So yeah, I would say that I have got a fairly broad taste in music with a heavy centre of metal. But couple of days back I was listening to The Beatles. I hadn't listened to them for quite some time and I did not realise how much they've influenced my musical choices. And in turn it made me think of WHERE my musical influences came from. My brothers obviously were strong influences. My second oldest gave me The Ultimate Classical Collection, "So you'll stop listening to this heavy metal shit!". I still got that collection, love it to this day and all it did was to expand my horizons. Then the following year he gave me CD's by Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck. Þórður gave me a Ministry(No not the Techno-Dance shit, the REAL ministry) "So you'll stop listening to the Herbert shit!". And again all it did was expand my musical horizons.

But, yeah THE musical influence in my life have been mum and grandma. She had(and hopefully still HAS) the biggest vinyl collection I have come across. And in that collection she had the entire collection of The Beatles, some The Kinks, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, BB King, Louis Armstrong, Elvis Presley and many many more, including The Muppet Show Album(which is still a bit of a favourite, especially the songs 'Time in A Bottle' and 'Lydia The Tattooed Lady'(Every time I listen that first song I tend to shed a tear while thinking of grandma)). So from my mum I got a very strong basis in rock 'n roll, along with progressive tendencies and blues and traditional jazz. Mum still has the ability to surprise me with her musical choices as I still remember her tapping her feet to Diablo Swing Orchestra and then recommending The Tiger Lillies to me! I used to spend a lot of time at my grandmas and she would always have at least two radios on, both with different stations on. Radio 1 would generally play classical music amongst other things where as Radio 2 had talk shows and slightly more in the now music, but she herself would also teach me(and others of course) about traditional Icelandic music and poetry. So there came my folky influences.

But my heavy metal journey started when I came across a VHS tape(remember them folks?!) called Kerrang Video Kompilation, which had such superstars as Iron Maiden, Mama's Boys, WASP, KISS, Helix, Armored Saint, Motorhead, Twisted Sister, Queensryche and Madam X! Iron Maiden is still my favourite band, along with Queensryche. And for many many years I would and could not listen to anything but the Melodic side of Heavy metal, couldn't stand growls and such like. But the past few years I have found that my musical tastes have actually gone towards the heavy, darker, murkier side of things. And in some cases it collides into things like Septic Flesh, who play very symphonic death metal and Sear Bliss who play Black Metal with brass instruments. So yeah, thanks for that John.

I am forgetting one element that is a very strong one as well. Musicals. Jesus Christ Superstar still blows me away when I listen to it, and Rocky Horror Picture Show. I like albums that play as concept albums and have either a running theme or a whole story. One of the best one's I've come across was album called Christ.O by Vanden Plas which apparently is based on Count of Monte Christo.

All in all, as can be seen. I love music. So thank you to everyone, especially mum and grandma. It is a journey that is still full of wonderful surprises and delights.