Album Review: Iron Maiden, "Fear of the Dark"

The mighty MAIDEN extinguish the lights and slap us smack in the face with their no-compromise, we-know-what-we-do-best-and-we-do-it-best kind of attitude. Laden with all the usual trademarks fans of the Mighty Metal Beast would expect: the duelling solos, the rapid unexpected time changes, and the soar of Bruce's viperous vocal assault. The kind of album where you know exactly what you're going to get and you get it 110%.

From a cynic's point of view, some might say it's pretty standard fare. There's your typical made in single "Be Quick Or Be Dead" through to your typical Harris-penned epics "From Here to Eternity," "Afraid to Shoot Strangers," "Childhood's End," "The Fugitive," and "Fear of the Dark" etc. To me what makes Fear... special is the fact that it's more than standard. There's that little bit extra thrown in that shows a definite progression from their return-to-roots approach of No Prayer For The Dying. When you look at the song-writing credits, it seems that everybody has been given a fair crack of the whip. However, I would cite Manic Janick's debut writing collaborations with Messrs Dickinson and Harris on tracks such as the aforementioned single, "Fear is the Key," "Wasting Love," "The Apparition," and the very unMaidenesque "Weekend Warrior" that's given Fear... that extra 10% life injection.

Maiden may not have the edge of contemporary freshness they once had circa Number of the Beast, Peace of Mind, but then that was then and this is now. Founder members Steve Harris and Dave Murray have steered the Irons through an era that has seen them become Britain's most popular and successful heavy metal act. Their second headline appearance at this year's Monsters of Rock is testament enough to that fact.

To my ears Fear of the Dark is a natural extension from where they left off on Peace of Mind, and, in my books, their best offering since.

Grade A

Mark Crampton
Riff Raff
July 1992

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!