Iron Maiden will always be fighting an uphill battle, no matter
\nwhat else they do with their musical career. They will always be
\nstaring early hits like “The Trooper,” “The Number Of The Beast”
\nand “Aces High” in the face while trying to win fans’ support for
\nnew material. They will always have the albatross of
\nLive After Death<\/i> around their necks, and any live work they
\nrelease will ultimately be compared to what amounts to one of the
\nbest live albums ever recorded. They will always have to deal with
\nthe period in their career when Bruce Dickinson left the band and
\nBlaze Bayley tried unsuccessfully to fill the role as lead
\nthroat.<\/p>\n
Steve Harris and crew started to make a turn in the right
\ndirection with
\nBrave New World<\/i>, Iron Maiden’s “reunion” album which
\nwelcomed Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith back into the fold.
\nTheir latest live release,
\nRock In Rio<\/i>, helps to push that momentum forward, but
\nultimately it too runs into the same stumbling blocks that Iron
\nMaiden has faced for the last decade.<\/p>\n
The disc – recorded at the music festival of the sane name in
\nRio De Janiero, Brazil in 2001, has sparked some controversy
\nbecause of alleged “overdubbing” of Dickinson’s vocals – charges
\nwhich Harris angrily denied, though he admitted he did edit some
\nportions where the crowd took over the singing, and re-pasted
\nDickinson’s repeated vocal lines over them. In all honesty, if I
\nhadn’t known about this mini-controversy, I would never have been
\nthe wiser; everything sounds pretty natural, and any edits that
\nHarris made seem to be air-tight.<\/p>\n
That said, the major complaint I have with the sound on
\nRock In Rio<\/i> is that, on occasion, it sounds like Dickinson’s
\nvocal microphone was picking up distortion, and it was being turned
\non and off as needed. You can almost hear a click when Dickinson
\nstarts to sing on some of these lines – and since I heard them on
\nportions other than repetitive choruses, I won’t blame Harris’s
\nediting. But it is something that Harris should have caught in the
\nedit – or at least tried to explain in the liner notes as being a
\nlimitation of recording in a festival setting.<\/p>\n
The other complaint is that Iron Maiden relies a little too
\nheavily on
\nBrave New World<\/i> – of the 18 selections performed by the band
\n(not including the film-music introduction), one-third of the
\ntracks are live versions of songs from
\nBrave New World<\/i>. That’s 60 percent of the new disc which is
\nfeatured – and, honestly, they could have lopped that number in
\nhalf and still had a fair representation of
\nBrave New World<\/i>. (In all fairness, though,
\nLive After Death<\/i> featured half of
\nPowerslave<\/i>, their current album in 1985.) Tracks like “The
\nMercenary” and “Dream Of Mirrors” could have been axed in favor,
\nsay, of material from
\nNo Prayer For The Dying<\/i> or
\nSomewhere In Time<\/i>, two albums which are ignored in this set
\nlist.<\/p>\n
It is interesting to note that Dickinson doesn’t shy away from
\nany material from the Bayley era of Maiden, much like he took on
\nsongs from Paul Di’Anno’s stint as lead throat. “Sign Of The Cross”
\n– one track from the Bayley era I actually enjoyed – proves that
\nDickinson is more than just a capable vocalist, he can take nearly
\nany song and make it his own. “The Clansman” is not quite as
\nstrong, though the fault is more in the source material than the
\nperformance.<\/p>\n
Besides the glitches in Dickinson’s vocal mix, the overall sound
\nof
\nRock In Rio<\/i> is quite good – though I admit it’s sometimes
\nhard to tell if Janick Gers’s contributions have been correctly
\nmixed, seeing there’s now three guitarists fighting for the
\nspotlight. There were one or two times I wish a guitar part had
\nbeen raised up in the mix, but compared to the buried guitar solos
\nof Gers’s on
\nLive At Donington<\/i>, this is a major improvement.<\/p>\n
And even the most cynical Iron Maiden fan has to admit that the
\nband – who sounded like they were poised for a return to glory on
\nBrave New World<\/i> – do continue to make steps forward with
\nRock In Rio<\/i>. Dickinson is in fine voice, while the
\nthree-guitar attack of Gers, Smith and Dave Murray sounds like Iron
\nMaiden was born to be a triple-axe attack. Harris and Nicko McBrain
\nare as dependable as rain on bass and drums, respectively.<\/p>\n
It’s difficult to not compare
\nRock In Rio<\/i> to
\nLive After Death<\/i> – after all, the new disc features a band
\n16 years older (at the time), and hopefully wiser than before their
\nranks began to split a bit. While it’s not the perfect portrait of
\nwhere Iron Maiden is in the 21st Century, it offers hope of greater
\nthings to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5725],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-37364","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-iron-maiden","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37364"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37364"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}