Review Summary: Give it time and Final Frontier will grow on you, this is Iron Maiden doing more then resting on their laurels and it might take a bit to get used to that.
There are certain bands that deserve some level of respect. You may dislike their music, or even their personalities, but you’ve got to admire their resilience and consistency. AC/DC is one of those bands, and I’m not even ashamed to admit that I dislike their music. Iron Maiden is also on the list, for the simple fact that the average age of its members is 54 years, and they’re not just rewriting the same album over and over. Final Frontier is a perfect example of how Maiden has been gradually tweaking a popular formula, adding increasingly more progressive elements and experimenting with their sound.
Unfortunately for those fans with a hankering for a galloping bass line, you’ll struggle to find it here. Lead single “El Dorado” is the only song that features it prominently, and that’s nowhere near representative of the rest of the album. That’s an improvement in a way though, it proves the band isn’t just resting on its laurels. Steve Harris instead shows a subtler side on tracks like “When The Wild Wind Blows”. That’s not to say that the classic sound is completely missing, Bruce Dickinson still soars well over his imitators, and the triple guitar work of Dave Murray, Janick Gers, and Adrian Smith still shines with some absolutely killer riffs and solos, not to mention some nice acoustic work on “The Talisman”. The only major misstep is with Nicko McBrain, the drummer, who performs admirably except for “Satellite 15”, where the programmed drums become grating very quickly.
“Starblind” is probably the most interesting song here, as it not only nails its progressive structure but also includes a well placed string section towards the end. To top it all off, Dickinson’s lyrics are some of his most inspired, “Remember you can choose to look but not see and waste your hours” in reference to religion. “Starblind” is essentially the perfect representation of Iron Maiden’s current sound, and it sounds great.
It’s a shame the first half of the album doesn’t quite stack up to the second half, but I suppose it’s to be expected. All of the more accessible songs are in that half, with the ones that are more progressively inclined stacked at the end. Still,
Final Frontier is a fantastic album from a band that, despite working together for 35 years now, can still manage to sound fresh and exciting in places; that alone should be commended.
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