2010 marked an interesting point in the career of British metal legends IRON MAIDEN. Vocalist Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith had re-joined the band to much fanfare over a decade before and the band had gone on to release three critically acclaimed albums with this new ‘super lineup’, long banishing the dark times that had come during their early-to-mid-90s era.
Fans were still a little wary though. Dickinson‘s first stint with the band had come to an end after 10 years, starting with 1982’s legendary album The Number Of The Beast and ending with the comparatively directionless Fear Of The Dark in 1992. Would the same rot start to set in this second time around? Would Dickinson‘s ambitions make him restless again after another 10 years with MAIDEN? Would the music start to half-heartedly retread old territory, like it had in the 90s? Further speculation arose during interviews in the lead up to the album’s release, with bassist Steve Harris saying he’d always imagined that the band would call it a day after 15 albums. The Final Frontier was to be their fifteenth album and, with a name like that, who could blame fans for wondering if this would be the band’s swansong?
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As it turned out, IRON MAIDEN still had a long way to go yet (as their current record-breaking Run For Your Lives world tour proves) but at the time fans really thought this could be the end. Thematically, the album only fuelled this idea, touching as it does on tales of apocalypse, failed exploration, reconciliation and returning home. Musically, it continued the more progressive approach to songwriting established on Brave New World, the Smith and Dickinson ‘comeback’ album released in 2000. Hardly any of the ten songs on offer here dip below the five minute mark and most of them follow a non-linear structure, building further on the album’s theme of exploration. Until 2015’s The Book Of Souls double album, The Final Frontier was actually IRON MAIDEN’s longest album, clocking in at an epic seventy six minutes. Production duties were once again handled by long-time collaborator Kevin Shirley so the album retained the huge sound of their previous three albums and in terms of popularity, it proved to be one of their biggest sellers yet, peaking at number one in the UK – their first chart-topping album since 1992’s Fear Of The Dark – and number four on the US Billboard top 200, their highest album chart position in America up to that point.
El Dorado was the only single made available before the album released, an aggressive and edgy-sounding song with knowing lyrical nods to the people who caused the financial crash of 2008 (“I’ve a clever banker’s face, with just a letter out of place”). It still has the classic galloping IRON MAIDEN bass and guitar riffs but everything sounds just a little more updated, thanks in part to Dickinson’s cutting vocal delivery (although some would argue that it’s a little rich when our multi-millionaire metal heroes start complaining about people having too much money). Other highlights from the album are a little more in keeping with the sci-fi cover artwork – the title track, Starblind and the emotive Coming Home all tell tales of adventurers trying to return home after exploring the galaxy, sometimes only to find that home is gone.
In places it’s a surprisingly emotional album, which isn’t something IRON MAIDEN are usually known for and in that respect it feels similar to 2021’s Senjutsu, which focuses largely on crumbling empires and battles lost long ago. It’s interesting to note, too, that this record features a real variety of songwriters, with Adrian Smith and Bruce Dickinson noticeably credited almost as often as band founder Steve Harris. Even guitarists Dave Murray and Janick Gers get a credit!
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