Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son [Enhanced]

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This album was the last of the great five maiden albums before the more suicidal albums like "No Prayer for the dying" and "Virtual XI". Thankfully before the transtition to poor albums they ended their eighties existence with their best album to date! This album was a concept album based on an ancient legend about "the seventh son of a seventh son" and the songs were reflections on the legend. Talking about whether the child would use his psychic powers for the good of others and to aid healing, or whether he would use them for his own ends which could be evil. A cool idea for an album by all means and proved a good base for what was to become a memorable album. Here is my song by song breakdown: -

Track 1) - Moonchild
This track is quite fast paced and seems like a good opener to the album, not a classic track but certainly not weak!
rating - 8/10

Track 2) - Infinite dreams
This track is one of the four singles that was released from it and it is obvious why. The song is very melodic and quite slow in places, however the lyrics talking about visions of past, present and future do grab you and all in all is a worthy song.
Rating - 9/10

Track 3) - Can I play with madness?
This song is the one song on the album that doesn't fit the style of music. While the others are dark, grim and philosophical. This song is fast, upbeat and insane! However that isn't a fault and the fact it charted at number three backs that theory up.
Rating - 9/10

Track 4) - The evil that men do
This is one of Maiden's strongest ever songs. It has flash guitar, great vocals, fantastic lyrics and mass appeal. What is good about this song is the level of variation contained within it, at the start it is very slow solo guitar then later comes out all guns blazing. A storming track.
Rating - 10/10

Track 5) - Seventh son of a seventh son
The title track of the album and one that is not easily forgotten! This song is one of their epics lasting roughly 9 and a half minutes! The pace is also scattered from slow to quick. The lyrics seem to be talking about the main point of the album, the child becoming good or evil. Backing up this point is the chilling verse where Bruce Dickinson slowly talks out the prophecy. This song may well be long but do not hold that against it, this is proper metal and the best song on the album.
Rating - 10/10

Track 6) - The prophecy
This song is this albums weakest link. It is a very slow song and while it argues a good point about a person faking a claim to be the seventh son and abusing it it is let down by weak guitar and quite poor vocals. The song isn't bad, it just sticks out on this album!
Rating - 7/10

Track 7) - The clairvoyant
This track another strong song. What appeals about this song is the awesome use of the keyboards! Odd for a heavy metal outfit to use as music keyboard on a song like this but then again if it comes out like this do not complain! The lyrics talk of how the clairvoyant can predict anything except his own downfall. Powerful lyrics backed by powerful vocals and strong instruments. A very worthy song.
Rating - 9/10

Track 8) - Only the good die young
This song is very remniscent of the first song "moonchild" (the use of the opening verse proves this!). However unlike its opening counterpart this song is heavier and focuses more on the music than the vocals. It is a good song and the quote at the end of the song gives it a very continuous feel to it. Quite clever and a good way to close and awesome album.
Rating 9/10

So there you have it the album broken down so you can understand it. Be warned this is like "Somewhere in time" for how it fits in previous albums, this is not their heaviest album and therefore people may find it hardest to get into. However stick with it and you should have this is in your music player alot throughout your lifetime. I thorughly recommend it and having heard all of the albums I can safely say it is their best, buy it!

All Iron Maiden albums from "The Number Of The Beast" to "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son" are absolute classics and timeless masterpieces. I grew up listening to these records, and I know every lyric, every pause, every guitar tone and every tempo change by heart. So, more than sad, I'm really angry to have to say that all the "enhanced" 1998 releases are complete sonic disasters, "loudness war" productions with the audio dynamic range slaughtered by whoever was responsible for doing the remastering. It seems that the idea was to turn all the way up the sound of every single instrument and vocal line with no regard to the equilibrium between them within the music's context. I almost cried in anger when I heard those guitar chords at the start of the song "Moonchild", with the originally carefully distorted tone turned into a mass of just plain annoying, pointless distortion, and all the feeling lost.

Every time I get to write about a dear album destroyed by a "loudness war" remaster, I ask people to go to a search engine like Google and look up the expression (between quotes for an exact match). There are over 47,000 results for it on Google alone. The "loudness war" refers to a trend which started in the late nineties in the music industry to record CD's at increasingly higher volume levels, in an attempt to lure buyers into believing that they were getting a better product because it's a "remaster" and it sounds louder. What happens most of the time is the exact opposite - masterpieces like this album are sonically cannibalized, and often (although not the case here) the audio volume is pushed beyond the limits of the CD format's specitications, which causes parts of the sound to get "clipped" (cut off, lost) because they don't "fit" within the available range. I specially recommend that people at least read an online article called "The Death Of Dynamic Range" and watch to a very popular video available on YouTube called "The Loudness War", both of which explain in an easily understandable way what this thing is all about. Things have reached such an extreme point that you can find people on P2P networks sharing lossless files with digitized versions of the original vinyl recordings of entire discographies of seminal bands like Iron Maiden because the CD's currently available are just unbearable to listen to.

As always, it's hard to tell if the band had any say in these releases, but anyway, they are an unacceptable insult to the band's musical legacy and their fans. If you want to hear Iron Maiden closer to how the original records used to sound, look for the first "non-remastered-nor-enhanced" CD releases of their albums.

Slated by fans and critics alike for using keyboards on the record, this album proved that Iron Maiden did exactly what they wanted. For a band at their commercial peak no fan expected what amounted to a heavy prog' rock album. Swirling keyboards on the title track to the accapella harmonies on "Can I Play With Madness" this lp has them all. Adrian Smith's lead guitar is outstanding on what was to be his (temporarily) swansong recording with the band. Quite simply the best Iron Maiden Studio album. It came out in 1988 - buy it now!!