I was a teenager when singer Bruce Dickinson departed Iron Maiden. It was 1993 and years away from the internet, soon to be our tool for crawling up the asses of any celebrity, even a metal musician. So at the time, I was left to make sense of his resignation using only his words and those of his former bandmates, i.e. official sources.

So I could only speculate about the real story: To me, the culprits were probably burn-out (due to Maiden’s relentless schedule) and bassist Steve Harris’ tight control of Maiden’s creativity. I also suspected that Harris harbored a belief that his Maiden could prosper regardless of personnel; after all, he and manager Rod Smallwood had unflinchingly replaced guitarist Dennis Stratton, singer Paul Di’Anno, drummer Clive Burr, and then-guitarist Adrian Smith just in the band’s first decade as recording artists. My friends called this ‘Arrygance.

But what I didn’t know until now was that Bruce Dickinson had gone slightly, charmingly bonkers. Click to read more…

My heavy metal DVD shelf was once pretty bare, displaying only The Decline Of Western Civilization and a load of one-view concert films. But just since 2005, it’s been sagging under the weight of classy, addictively watchable feature-length documentaries like Heavy Metal In Baghdad, Get Thrashed, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, Global Metal, and the Iron Maiden and Rush movies. The latter four come courtesy of industrious heavy metal anthropologists Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen, both responsible for the launch of metal’s overdue efforts to canonize itself and shout down mainstream media’s 40-year campaign to paint metal as dumb, violent ape music. Pssht. Everybody knows it’s awesome, fun ape music.

Cough anyway Dunn and McFadyen are back with an 11-part mini-series airing Saturdays on VH1 Classic titled Metal Evolution. Think about it for a sec: That’s a total running time of about 440 minutes. If you’re not bonered about that, then … gosh, get your boner checked, okay? To date, three episodes have aired, each detailing the roots of metal in blues, jazz, and classical music; Saturday’s episode (above) traveled to England to gab with/about Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin (who, according to Dunn, declined to be interviewed due to an aversion to being associated with metal), and concluded with Judass Priest circa Sad Wings Of Destiny. Spoiler: Bruce Dickinson calls Eric Clapton “tame” compared to Ritchie Blackmore. SWISH! Episode schedule after the jump:

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Jesus doesn’t have time to end world hunger or stop war or just return and make his followers shut up about it already, but he does watch Polish reality shows, and he was not happy about Nergal, that Satan worshipping bastard, being a judge on that country’s version of the reality program The Voice (in which some celebrity judges look for the next great blah blah blah). And so, recently, Nergal was fired from that program.

But I guess not before he’d already filmed a few episodes, ’cause now Heavy Blog is Heavy has video of him rocking out to some lady covering Maiden, and giving her some advice, as well. Check it out below.

And here’s the translation of what Nergal was saying (also courtesy of HBiH), in case you don’t, y’know, speak Polish:

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Iron Maiden are starting to rival KISS in the merch department, aren’t they? Oh. well. I still prefer Eddie’s grinning face smacked on everything rather than Gene Simmons’ obnoxious one.

A new book entitled On Board Flight 666, which  chronicles life behind the scenes on Ed Force One, will be released before the year is up. Photographer John McMurtrie accompanied the band on their Somewhere Back in Time tour in 2008, as well as the Round the World in 66 Days leg of the Final Frontier tour from earlier this year. The book features a foreword by Captain Bruce Dickinson himself, and contains hundreds of pictures and insights into what went into these tours. Pretty cool gift for those die-hard fans since it is currently the only official book about the band.

On Board Flight 666 is available comes out on October 22 in the UK; now word yet on a U.S. release date.

-LF

I had shall we say a moment of clarity about Van Halen this week. It’s nothing bad and nobody’s fault. I love. To me, they score highest in all categories of awesomeness since The Beatles srs. And thusly, I think fans flex on lots of bullcrap. Like, no Michael Anthony? Uh okay. Your teen son in his place? If you say he’s cool, then cool. Shirtless in those white capris brah? Fuckin’ have to trust you on that, I will! And the super secret recording sessions? Fuck it! Like the song says, I’ll wait. Ditto for Aerosmith.

My, like, epiphany isn’t about something they’ve done that freaked me out. There exists no action to be undertaken by Van Halen that could disinterest me in their DLR-inclusive shit. But here I’ll reprise the headline as I explain the wake-up call I received the other day: Holy fuck Van Halen is old as all shit.

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At age five, Tom Araya left Chile with his family to come to America. Fifteen years after that, he joined the then-fledgling band Slayer. Thirty years after that (i.e., now), Slayer enjoys acclaim only shared by Iron Maiden in consistency and intensity. And as Maiden is fronted by the greatest metal singer of all time, Slayer has Araya, metal’s most compelling, visceral screamer. Two notes are all he needs. I’d attend NASCAR if he were the announcer; if he were a salesman, I’d buy used toilets from the dude.

Word of Araya’s skillz (and cuddly-bear disposition) seems to have reached authorities in Chile, as Friday he was granted the key to the city of Viña del Mar, his birthplace. Araya said:

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One of you recently sent us the video for “No Salvation” by the band Hostile (and I lost your e-mail so I apologize for not properly crediting you by name), pointing out that the band was noteworthy because their bassist, Alex Hill, is the offspring of Ian Hill, who, in case you know nothing about anything, is the bass player for Judas Priest. In fact, it turns out that Hostile’s debut album, Eve of Destruction, was produced by K.K. Downing, who, of course, just recently left Judas Priest. And you’d hope that a) Ian Hill had transferred some of his talent via his sperm, and/or b) Downing was able to bring some of his Judas Priest magic to these Hostile proceedings.

Alas, your hope would all be for naught. Hostile is pretty terrible. I mean, I guess it starts off as passable enough Swedecore, but then the singer, who apparently has no higher aspiration than to be in Five Finger Death Punch, starts his bit, and the whole thing becomes more or less completely fucking awful.

And what’s kind of amazing about this is that Ian Hill is not the only child of a metal star who somehow totally failed to inherit any of his father’s talent.

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Andy McCoy, one of the founding members of Hanoi Rocks, wrote a book. In 2008. [Our own Corey Mitchell reviewed it in 2010. - Ed.] I read it pretty recently as it came to me with a bunch of Christmas/Hannukah/New Year’s loot. My family doesn’t celebrate anything, so we basically give each other presents because the year is over. Yeah, I don’t know. We put up a tree, too.

Anyway, I kind of dropped the ball on Andy, and that’s kind of a recurring thing these days, because every once in a while I get caught up on that “having a life thing.” I did finally read it, though, and I quite enjoyed it. To an extent. Now, I love books. Reading = fun times for me. I usually have three or four books I’m juggling and one of them is almost always a music biography. But Sherriff McCoy; Outlaw Legend of Hanoi Rocks goes on the pile of band books that really could’ve used a good edit.

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Ah, Valentine’s Day. Reviled by most, enjoyed by the smug, and shrugged off by the belligerently ambivalent. But while most of us couldn’t care less about this specific day in February, it’s still an annoyance that comes around every year. Kind of like the common cold.

Now, most places will have shitloads of “quirky” recommendations you can do with your special someone, even if you’re of the metalhead persuasion. You can hold sweaty hands in the privacy of your parents’ basement, pour each other some classy Motorhead wine, and share a blood pudding in the dreamy light of those church candles. It’s all very nice and sweet to be… nice and sweet.

But you know what’s better? DOING IT. With a killer soundtrack. So on this very special day, I’ve made you all a romantically inappropriate mix tape.

Picking “mood” songs is a little too obvious for my taste. I mean yeah, Faith No More’s “Stripsearch” (Actually, that might be more of a stripping song than a sexing one, but ,hmm, “Evidence” maybe? Heh, “Be Aggressive” might work for some. Either way, Patton’s voice = nudity.) and NIN’s “Closer” are both appropriate (for very different reasons), but that’s no fun. Go forth and find that special someone willing to get, get naked to these select songs. There’s a little something for everyone. St. Valentine would’ve wanted it that way.

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Admit it: this picture makes you SO FUCKING HAPPY.

Recently, my friend sent me a YouTube link to a Bee Gees cover group. Excuse me, tribute band. That is the proper way of addressing them, as Mark Wahlberg taught us in Rock Star. I don’t like the Bee Gees. I don’t like disco. Disco is kind of terrible. Disco blows dogs for quarters. Disco is never amazing, especially not when KISS attempt it. To say I was a little confused would be an understatement. But my friends aren’t totally clueless to what I listen to, so I gave it a shot. It turned out it was a heavy metal Bee Gees tribute band. Okay, it was a little bit awesome. Weirdly enough, it worked. I only like thin-voiced men screeching when accompanied by equally high-pitched guitars, and that’s basically what heavy metal “Stayin’ Alive,” was. I turned it off about halfway through because, well, I still have my limits, but it kind of makes you stop and go, “Huh!” Metal just makes everything sound better.

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The Grammy nominations have been announced, and, as per usual, they’ve got nuthin’ to do with nuthin’. This isn’t a shock; the Grammys have been a meaningless award, and will remain a meaningless award. But if you’re morbidly curious, as I am, as to who old white dudes think are the créme de la créme of our music of choice, the nominees, and some more snarky commentary from yours truly, are after the jump.

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Iron Maiden have announced another world tour –”playing 29 shows and visiting 26 cities in thirteen countries across 5 continents” with, natch, Bruce Dickinson piloting the Ed Force One again. And the tour isn’t coming to North America, so on a purely selfish level, this has no bearing on my life whatsoever — but the question on everyone’s mind, I imagine, is “What songs will they play?”

Dickinson gives hint in a statement about the trek:

“The set list will be different to this year’s tour. Of course we will play more songs from the new album and some other recent material, but we will include a healthy dose of older fan favourites as we will be playing to so many new faces who we know will want to hear those songs live for the first time.”

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Even if Iron Maiden were always pretty polished, there’s no denying that there was a punk influence on their work with Paul Di’Anno, and that said punk influence carried over to their earliest releases with Bruce Dickinson. A lot of the band’s most famous songs from those barely-separate eras — “Running Free,” “Wratchild,” “Number of the Beast,” “Run to the Hills,” “Flight of Icarus,” etc. — are under five minutes long. There was a lean and mean quality to those songs that the band gradually ditched. In fact, you can trace this progression pretty easily:

• Iron Maiden — Only three songs over five minutes, only one over seven minutes, total run time is 40:39.
• Killers — Only two songs over five minutes, only one over six minutes, total run time is 41:18.
• The Number of the Beast — Only three songs over five minutes, two of which are six minutes plus, one of which is seven minutes plus. Total run time is 40:22.
• Piece of Mind — Four songs over five minutes, two of which are over six, one of which is over seven. Total run time is 45:50.
• Powerslave — Four songs over five minutes, including “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” which is more than thirteen minutes long. Total run time is 50:57.

Then the band got somewhat carried away with Somewhere in Time, which only has one song under five minutes and a total running time of 51:24, and then they reigned things in a little for Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (total run time: 43:50), No Prayer for the Dying (44:25), and Fear of the Dark (58:29). Then they made two albums I like to pretend never happened, and then Bruce Dickinson returned to the band, and, frankly, everything kinda fell to shit:

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Call me a Maiden fanboy, but I really, really enjoyed this most recent Iron Maiden tour’s setlist of mostly newer stuff. Especially the material from Brave New World, an album I absolutely adore and much of which I’ll likely never get to hear again in a live setting.

Here’s some pro-shot live footage from the MSG show we attended of the band playing “Blood Brothers” from that album. Bruce’s pre-song dedication to Ronnie James Dio was one of the more touching moments of the night, and the manner in which he raises the horns and looks at his hand like it’s possessed by an insidious infection that he’d allow only for his blood brother Dio is highly hilarious and so Bruce.

Also note: the audience singing along to the chorus, loudly. Apparently I wasn’t the only one.

-VN

For me, the foundation of metal is a five-sided structure (A pentagram? Nah, too obvious. A pentagon!), with each side being represented by Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Pantera, and Slayer, respectively. Though the last two are debatable (but not THAT debatable), the first three are, to borrow a term, unfuckwithable. And of those three, the band that’s aged the best is Iron Maiden. Judas Priest, while still retaining most of their firepower, also dabble with overstuffed, convoluted concept albums about Nostradamus; best to stick to the Halford lineup’s original masterpieces. And while Sabbath have managed to impress on a number of reunion tours with their most cherished singer (one Ozzy Osbourne) and their most underrated (one Ronnie James Dio, RIP), I find it hard to believe the band have one more great album in them, let alone another classic to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their first six records.

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Full disclosure: Bob Cock has only listened to The Final Frontier once in its entirety. He also got it just a couple days ago and still has a few other things he’s working on, but this isn’t about excuses.

Let’s face it, though: once a band has become an institution like the almighty Iron Maiden, it’s not so much about the new albums as it is about the band’s legacy. Whether it’s classics (see: Powerslave, Fear of the Dark, Killers, Piece of Mind, etc.), the venerable band’s more recent “comeback” catalog (Brave New World, Dance Of Death, A Matter of Life and Death), the swing and misses (anything – aside from a few songs – with Blaze Bayley), or the underrated (Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son, Iron Maiden), you know you’re going to buy it.

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

Inspired by Ozzy Osbourne’s recent declaration that Bruce Dickinson “needs a fuckin’ psychiatrist,” this week we decided to ask our writers:

WITH WHOM DO YOU SIDE IN THE NEWLY RE-HEATED OSBOURNES VS. DICKINSON FEUD?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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In case you somehow don’t remember, Iron Maiden were one of the mainstage headliners at Ozzfest in 2005 (which I think was pretty much the last really good year for Ozzfest), and while I’ve never quite understood how it all started, there was some kind of beef between the Maiden/Ozzy camps — more specifically, between Maiden and Sharon Osbourne. And on Maiden’s last night of the tour, someone fucked with their power and some people pelted them with eggs and engaged in all other manner of pranks, and Sharon actually called Bruce Dickinson “a prick” on-stage in front of thousands of metal fans. (You can read all about that little incident here, or enjoy video of Sharon’s speech above.)

And that was really the last we heard about it… until now. I don’t recall Ozzy himself ever commenting on the incident before, he recently did during an interview with The Quietus:

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Photo credit: MS photographic wiz Jacqueline Cheng. More pics (including lots of opening act Dream Theater) coming soon!

The setlist of Iron Maiden’s current U.S. tour has been the topic of much debate lately. At first I was bummed to hear that it would consist of mostly material from Brave New World and newer, the album on which Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith rejoined the band. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that it was actually a pretty cool thing for the band to. I LOVED Brave New World so it would be a treat to hear those songs live again after 10 (!) years, and though I couldn’t possibly ever tire of hearing Maiden’s classic songs live, I’d seen them performed on the Somewhere Back in Time World Tour less than two years. Maybe it was time for something different, and maybe it was time for everyone to stop whining and to let the band do their thing. They’ve earned it after all these years.

By the time I was standing at my seat in Madison Square Garden on Monday night I was 100% behind the idea of a Maiden set focusing on new material. And Iron Maiden did a fucking fantastic job with it, putting on a stellar, captivating show as always and giving us, the fans, something just as fun, albeit a bit different, than what we’re used to.

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Photo courtesy Hardcore Shutterbug, via Brooklyn Vegan

Well, here’s an idea so delightfully silly I’m shocked no one thought of it sooner: Phil Freeman has interviewed Eddie for Cleveland Scene. Yes, Eddie. Yes, the decaying corpse zombie that’s been Iron Maiden’s mascot for thirty years. And, yes, he’s a fictional character — but that hasn’t stopped Nathan Explosion or Andrew W.K. from giving interviews, so whatever.

Here’s an excerpt that tickled me:

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