Revisiting Iron Maiden’s “Dance Of Death”
(Note: this article originally appeared as a guest post on the “Ginger Nuts of Horror” web site in 2016).
When Iron Maiden released Brave New World in 2000, they effectively pressed a big red “reboot” button on their career. The return of Lord Dickinson to the Maiden fold immediately erased all of the bad ju-ju that had accumulated during the Blaze Bayley era (forever to be known as The Dark Ages) and the band rode that wave of goodwill straight back into the Enormo-Domes of the world.
Let’s be honest: BNW was and is a fine album, but in the grand scheme of things it wouldn’t have really mattered if it was good or not; the album had Bruce Dickinson behind the mic, and that was all that fans cared about. The band could’ve simply crapped on a paper plate and the reaction still would’ve been (ala overjoyed, drunken Maiden fanboy) “FUCK YEAH, DUUUUUDE! BRUUUUUCE IS BAAAAAAAAACK!! MAAAAIIIIIIDEEEEN! WOOOOO!”
Three years later, though, the “newness” of the Bruce reunion had worn off, and it was time for Maiden to get back to being a regular “band” again. When the refreshed sextet returned to record store racks with 2003’s Dance of Death the fans seemed to scrutinize it with a more critical eye than they did Brave New World. My personal Maiden fandom happened to be at a peak at this particular time — I’d finally seen the band live for the first time on the BNW tour (after being a fan for more than fifteen years), so obviously I was anxiously awaiting new tunes. I can still remember strapping my then-infant son into his car seat on a lovely September day in 2003 so I could rush out to Wal-Mart to pick up a first day copy of Dance of Death, which then remained locked into my CD player on a near-constant loop for the next several weeks.
I happened to have reviewed Dance Of Death for a friend’s now-defunct e-zine when the album was first released, so to prep for this article I peeked back into my archives to find out how my 2003 self felt about the record. At that time I described Dance of Death as “an album that takes a while to sink in, but once it does, it’s time well spent,” and I further declared that “Wildest Dreams,” “Paschendale” and the title track were my favorite numbers. I still stand behind those opinions all these years later. On Dance of Death, Iron Maiden may not have re-invented the wheel, but they didn’t mess the bed either. In a nutshell, it’s a nice continuation of where Brave New World left off, with the eleven tracks evenly mixed between upbeat, bouncy numbers and slow, sinister epics. The rollicking “Wildest Dreams” is still my favorite DOD track to this day, getting the album off to an energetic start and rolling into the catchy “Rainmaker.” The seven-minute-plus “No More Lies” starts off well enough but it overstays its welcome by at least two minutes; it also suffers from the “repeat the title eight times and call it a chorus” disease that Maiden trademarked during the 1990s. Things pick up again with the fast paced “Montsegur,” a tale of a long-ago castle siege during the Crusades. Bruce is spitting out lyrics so fast during this one that it occasionally sounds like he’s having trouble keeping up with the band!
The eight-and-a-half minute title track opens with some nice medieval-style noodling that actually reminds me of BNW’s “Blood Brothers” more than a little bit. The song’s lengthy intro shows Bruce D. in fine crooning form, backed by a sparse guitar/bass combo. When the full band finally kicks in with a metallic “jiggety-jig” around the three minute mark, I can’t help but picture the midgets dancing around that tiny Stonehenge in This Is Spinal Tap.
“Gates of Tomorrow” and “New Frontier” (another fave of mine) return to shorter, more rockin’ territory before the next epic, the fairly blah “Paschendale,” comes in. This is yet another history lesson, this time about a battle in World War I.
Dance of Death loses firepower in its last quarter. “Paschendale,” “Face in the Sand” and “Age of Innocence” are all decent enough while they’re playing but none will stick in your head when they’re over. Ditto for the rather dull, acoustic closer “Journeyman,” which sounds like it could be the end credit theme to a medieval costume drama, or perhaps a History Channel documentary.
In the end, Dance of Death comes off as more upbeat than Brave New World, in spite of its gloomy title and morose cover. Speaking of the cover, I’m sure that most fans would agree that Dance of Death sports the most god-awful ugly album art in the entire Maiden catalog. Apparently Maiden’s go-to artists, Derek Riggs and Melvyn Grant, were out yachting when the call went out for the Dance Of Death cover, so the job went to Dave Patchett, who was best known for his trippy Medieval-Times-on-‘shrooms collages for Lee Dorrian’s doom metal band Cathedral. Patchett and Maiden could’ve been a match made in heaven (or perhaps Hell), but the awkward, computer-generated final product (Grim Reaper Eddie at a half-naked masquerade ball?) was so bad that Patchett requested that his name be removed from the album credits. (There’s your useless trivia for today!)
Nearly twenty years after its release, Dance of Death still holds up quite well. If you haven’t spun it recently I recommend giving it another listen.
