Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews that Rob has written about movies, music, or anything that catches his fancy.

Review: Iron Maiden Book of Souls Tour and Album

Sunday night, I saw Iron Maiden’s Book of Souls concert, with the Swedish band Ghost opening for them. Here’s my review.

I should get this out of the way. I’ve been an Iron Maiden fan since junior high. I was the only kid who liked Rime of the Ancient Mariner in English class, because of Iron Maiden’s song about the poem. Also, I happen to think that Book of Souls may be their best work. It’s powerful stuff.

I say all this so you can understand my bias here.

There are Maiden fans who think it blasphemy that Book of Souls is their best work. Most of these would look at either The Number of the Beast or Powerslave, and I can see their point. Both are excellent albums, with great songs throughout that have stood the test of time.

This last is important to me. I liked Iron Maiden in junior high. Over the last four decades, that liking has turned into love as I’ve seen more and more the depth of that music over the years. Many are the bands or songs who I initially liked, but now don’t really care if I ever hear again. Nirvana is one of those.

In any case, Book of Souls is an incredibly good album. It will not produce radio hits like The Trooper or Run to the Hills, but that’s irrelevant. Iron Maiden consists of six musicians who took music seriously when they were young, have fought a bunch of battles, including among themselves, and have come out the other side with great skill and a tremendous understanding of each other.

The songs on Book of Souls are closer to symphonic music than to 80s metal. No song is shorter than 4:59, three are longer than 10 minutes, including Empire of the Clouds at 18:01. It is a perfectly Iron Maiden thing to do that they released Empire of the Clouds as one of the two singles. They really don’t care about the “radio” way of doing things as opposed to the music.

The iconoclast in me loves that.

Anyway, Empire of the Clouds tells the tale of the R101 airship incident in 1930. More people were killed in its crash than the Hindenberg, actually. It’s a great song of dreaming big, the risks that entails, death, and bravery. It’s 18 minutes of swirling music that dreams big and risks boredom, but sails on through.

The other 10 minute plus songs, The Red and the Black and The Book of Souls are also songs that could be too long, but instead are simply opportunities for the musicians to push themselves. The closest things to “radio” songs are The Speed of Light and If Eternity Should Fail, are actually too good, too complex, though shorter, to do well on the radio.

Obviously, I could go on about how much I love Book of Souls, but let’s talk about the concert. First, one of the things about Iron Maiden that I’ve appreciated for some time is their confidence. I’ve seen a lot of bands choose a mediocre opening act lest that act outshine the headliner.

Maiden doesn’t have that problem. They chose Ghost, which is a very good band in its own right, with a large following of their own. They may not be megastars in heavy metal like Maiden, but they are not chopped liver.

And Ghost was excellent. I’d heard some of their stuff before, but I didn’t realize quite how good they really were. They create a cool, slow atmosphere while hammering the music. Great combination. They’re not the hardest metal out there, but they put on a great show. I loved the interplay between guitarists before Cirice.

When watching Iron Maiden in concert one is immediately struck by the energy of Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer. He’s almost 59. He’s survived cancer. Yet he bounces around the stage and pours it all out. By the end of the show, he is drenched in sweat. He’s talked in interviews many times how much a performer owes to an audience, and by the end of an Iron Maiden show, there’s no doubt he lives up to his own expectations.

Maiden has three guitarists, which is not unique, but is uncommon. The disadvantage is that there’s a lot of redundancy in sound. The advantage is there’s a lot of redundancy in sound. By that I mean that one guitarist can carry the song along while allowing the other two to add to it. For Maiden, what this means is that Adrian Smith does a lot of the carrying along, freeing Janick Gers to be a wild showman doing tricks with his guitar while playing and Dave Murray to add intricate and rousing riffs. Smith gets his own chance to show off at times, too, as they all take turns carrying the song along, but Gers and Murray are the most obvious beneficiaries.

The rhythm section is one of the best around. Not on Rush’s level, but then who is? Nicko McBrain, the drummer, is very good, and Steve Harris, the bassist, is the master of Iron Maiden. It’s been his baby all along, with everyone else coming and going at various times.

This may not be Iron Maiden’s only lineup in its history, but this is the iconic lineup. And it shows with the quality of music since they came back together in the late 90s. They are better than ever.

They are also known for interesting sets, and this did not disappoint. The best aspect was the raised area all around the main performance area that allowed Dickinson to bounce around. Did I mention he’s an energetic performer?

Not surprisingly, with a library of 16 studio albums, there were songs I would have liked to hear. Hallowed Be Thy Name is my personal favorite Maiden song and that wasn’t on this tour. Run to the Hills is one of the most commercially successful songs they have and that was not played, which I didn’t mind actually. However, I would love to hear Empire of the Clouds live. I think Maiden would make an amazing production of it, but it is a long song and would take the place of two or three others, so I understand why they didn’t.

It would be a cool thing, though, if Maiden did a one-time Fathom Events thing where they played Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Empire of the Clouds, and other long-form songs. Then they could release a DVD. I’d buy that.

Anyway, they did play The Red and the Black, which is 13 minutes or so, so it isn’t like they looked for the shortest songs. 6 of the 12 songs in the main part of the concert were off Book of Souls, though the encore was entirely from earlier stuff (The Number of the Beast, Blood Brothers, and Wasted Years). If Eternity Should Fail is a great song to lead off an album and a concert.

I went to the concert with my sweetie. She’s not a Maiden fan, so she mostly enjoyed the show because I enjoyed the show.

So she enjoyed it a lot.

Even if you’re not a big Iron Maiden fan, they put on a good show. Go see them some time, you’ll be impressed.

 

 

Review: Moana

One of the challenges I face with my blog is finding topics. Obviously, I can write about sports, and update my writing, but that’s not enough.

So, I’m going to start doing reviews of things I read, see, or hear. Yesterday, I went to see Moana because one of the panels I’m on at ChattaCon will be a discussion of Moana as Disney’s version of Lord of the Rings.

The full panel description: Disney’s latest animated film is unique in its choice of a Polynesian setting and mythology, but some of its aspects seem Tolkien-esque. This panel compares Moana with LoR, and other kid’s flicks similar to Tolkien and other fantasy epics.

I thought it might be nice to, I don’t know, actually see the movie before talking about it. I know, I know. Weird, but that’s me.

Oh, and I’ll be giving spoilers. If you’re wanting to go see it and haven’t, don’t read any further if spoilers bother you.

Anyway, here are my thoughts. First, the story is loosely based on the mythology of Pacific islanders. Dwayne Johnson’s character, Maui, is a central figure in mythologies in many different cultures.

Moana, which is a word that means “the ocean” in Maori and Hawaiian. It is also the name of the main character who is chosen by the personified ocean to get the people of what is probably meant to be Samoa out of their self-imposed prison inside their reef.

Part of the reason she needs to do this is because the islands are threatened with death from a personification of lava. Moana needs to return a pounamu stone whence Maui had stolen it centuries before.

As plots go, it’s fairly standard. However, we’re talking about a Disney film aimed at children, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Also, since I’m watching this movie in order to compare it to Lord of the Rings, I can immediately see the similarity of the Ring and pounamu stone, especially since Moana needs to put the stone into lava, although it’s solidified at that point.

However, I found the plot much more comparable to Star Wars. Moana is Luke, though she is much more likable and resilient than Luke in many ways. Maui is Han, a trickster with a good heart with a sidekick that nags him, though in this case it’s his magical tattoo. Moana’s grandmother is Ben, who teaches her, then dies and becomes a ghostlike manta that helps her along the way. The Force is the ocean itself. The lava creature is the Death Star and putting the pounamu stone is like Luke’s shot.

I fell in love with Star Wars at the age of 9 and it’s no surprise that the same threads are in a cartoon movie aimed at that age group.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, even though I sort of knew what was going to happen because the plot seemed so obvious. I really like Dwayne Johnson as an actor, actually, as he’s getting better and better. Interestingly, he’s not the former bigtime football player to contribute his voice to this film, as former Pittsburgh Steeler Troy Polamalu also participated.

I love that most of the actors have South Pacific backgrounds. Of the 12 actors listed in IMDB, only Alan Tudyk (who mostly plays the crazy-eyed chicken), and Louise Bush (who plays the baby Moana) are not Maori, Samoan, or Hawaiian.

However, I wish they’d been even more focused on those traditions. I’m not going to get into some of the criticisms which are based in cultural insensitivity, but the odd mix of South Pacific traditions and Broadway did not work for me.

What do I mean by Broadway? Well, the movie is a musical with the music in part written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. There’s no doubting Miranda’s talent and he collaborated with Opetaia Foa’i, a Samoan musician. Unfortunately, while the songs were good, the music is exactly the sort of thing one would hear on Broadway, and Foa’i’s contribution may have been major but did not change the feel.

Every time they started a song, I got kicked out of the story. I would have loved more of the Maori, Samoan, and Hawaiian traditions, especially traditional folk music. For example, I loved when Maui started a haka before a major fight.

Overall, it was a nice movie, especially for kids. I like the concept quite a bit, but I think it could have been executed better.