Published on Sep 20, 2004
By the time
Fear Of The Dark, the ninth studio release from Iron Maiden
came out, the band sounded tired. They had been through the highs
and lows of fame, and had gone through almost as many lineup
changes as Spinal Tap had gone through drummers. Worse yet for
them, the music scene was in a complete state of flux, and about
the only thing anyone in the corporate circle could agree on was
that metal was not a commercial force.
Add onto this the stress of losing guitarist Adrian Smith and
replacing him with Janick Gers on their last disc
No Prayer For The Dying, and having to somehow return to
superstar form with their music this time around, and one can’t
really blame Iron Maiden for the end result.
Fear Of The Dark was, to this point, their weakest outing,
and served as a rather sour note for singer Bruce Dickinson to go
out on — during the tour for this disc, he announced his
retirement from the band, which lasted until 1999.
Oh, sure, things start out solidly enough with “Be Quick Or Be
Dead,” even if it wasn’t quite up to the standards that Iron Maiden
was known for in terms of singles. Without a plot line to follow,
this track just sounded a bit off — something, regrettably, the
whole album would suffer from. (It should have been a warning sign,
I guess, that the cover art was done by someone other than Derek
Riggs, the band’s longtime illustrator.)
It’s not that the songs on
Fear Of The Dark are bad — you have to go to
Virtual XI for that dubious honor — but that bassist Steve
Harris and crew, for the first time in their career, really don’t
seem to know which direction to take their music. Tracks like
“Afraid To Shoot Strangers” doesn’t know whether to be a ballad or
to have some muscle behind it, while tracks such as “Judas Be My
Guide,” “Weekend Warrior” and “Fear Is The Key” just fall
completely flat.
The title track does try to capture some of the mystique that
earlier Iron Maiden songs had, with just a hint of dread lurking
behind the backbeat. But it is nowhere near enough to salvage the
disc.
Like
Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son, this particular disc tends to
divide Iron Maiden fans along party lines, with precious little
middle ground to tread on. But
Fear Of The Dark hardly measures up to the levels of
excellence that Iron Maiden had created for themselves, and ended
up taking a step backwards with this disc — a step they would take
a long time to recover from.