perfidy

The first thing I remember I was fourteen, and I was lying around my room doing homework and listening to the radio when this noise came on, this crazy sprinting noise, and I stopped what I was doing and listened transfixed from the first note to the last. I felt like I'd been socked in the head and the world had unfolded before me into something bigger, badder and louder than I had ever thought it could be.

That was the first time I heard Guns 'n' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle." Ha... fooled you there, crossed you up, didn't I? This review is about Maiden and here I am yammering away about some hard rock glam hair band from LA. Well, you can cram it if you have a problem, because it relates. And not only because I detect a not-so-subtle musical thread running between G&R and the Maiden, mainly having to do with the quality of their grooves and the fact that they're a five-piece with a yowly lead singer. No, sir.

Maiden reminds me of Guns 'n' Roses because listening to the new Iron Maiden double-live gonzo extravaganza Death on the Road gives me chills all over like I was fourteen again. It takes me back to that age when metal was a thrilling new discovery to this Ohio teenager: Zeppelin, Ministry, Metallica, Megadeth, Judas Priest, and Maiden. Listening to Death on the Road I feel like I did that time we were listening to Somewhere In Time and then went and got Shawn's old Chevette with no passenger seats up to 85 MPH out on the back roads of Portage County. I feel like Columbus sighting land after ten weeks at sea. I feel like Neil Armstrong stepping onto Luna Firma. I feel like I just invented wet t-shirt night.

From the first notes of "Wildest Dreams" to the last chorus of "Run To The Hills," Death on the Road is a headbanging motherschtupper of a record. Maiden's rolling, sprinting grooves have not weakened with age, and the excellent recording captures every bit of guitar squeal and bass grind. Bruce Dickinson's voice is for the most part every bit as grand and overdramatic as ever, lending unexpected depth to epic silliness like "Paschendale" and "The Number of the Beast." So what if the first five minutes of 2003's "Dance of Death" are straight - I mean straight - out of Spinal Tap's "Stonehenge," and so what if the stentorian voice declaring "There are moh things, in heaven and uuuhth, then aaah drrrreamt of in yoh.... PHILOSOPHY!" is just reading - out of context - from Act 1 of Hamlet? It's so metal! The drums! The guitars! The solos! The... AAGH! YEAH! MAIDEN! MAIDEN ! MAIDEN!!!!!

The running order decidedly skews toward newer material, revealing a classic band that has stayed admirably true to itself and generally avoided self-parody. This is especially impressive considering that Maiden has always walked, as Nigel Tufnel said, that "fine line between stupid and clever." Some of the choicest obligatory warhorses are here: "Can I Play With Madness," "The Number of the Beast," "Run To The Hills," "The Trooper," but performances of newer songs like "Fear of the Dark," "Brave New World" and "Wildest Dreams" stand up right next to the classics. Lovingly recorded, the mix even recreates the live-show experience (sans the guy puking on your shoes) with enough audience noise to be fun but not in the way. On some songs the crowd sings along loud enough - and in tune enough - to sound like a choir of millions, ratcheting the intensity up a few more notches. It's so cool! Okay, I would have loved to have heard "Alexander the Great" or "Seventh Son," and "Stranger in a Strange Land," but for the most part the newer material is good enough that I don't really miss the big hits too much.

Iron Maiden are stone professionals, and everything on Death On The Road is right in place with two minor exceptions: the synth lines on "Can I Play With Madness" seem to be out of time, forcing the band to rejig the groove to fit with it (is it tape? Is is live? Am I crazy); and also, I'm sorry. I just can't get over how dorky "Dance of Death" is. Although Iron Maiden deserve a lot of credit in the age of super-aggro rap-metal for recording a song about a guy kidnapped by evil faerie druids and forced to take part in their fell ceremonies - I mean, that's sticking to your guns for the sake of your fans - Christopher Guest has ruined me forever on mystical faerie druid crap, and besides, I'm not fourteen any more. It's also probable that a lot of fans will have stronger feelings than I about the inclusion of the fairly not-good "Lord of the Flies" instead of something classic, but hey... the internet was built for whining about dumb stuff. That and pornography.

But never mind that. Death On The Road rocks so hard. Maiden have been around forever, and apart from the odd personnel change and the occasional laughable hunk of metallic cheese, they have thus far avoided becoming sad drug-addled jokes like Ozzy or dysfunctional therapy junkies like Metallica, or even a nostalgia act working the "metal club" circuit in places like Steubenville Ohio, Strasbourg, and Yorkshire. They are pros at this metal thing, and they've made a totally pro double-live metal album that gets me so wild I feel like I could... oh, oww! Ow, ow... ah... I'm getting too old for this... ow...