Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Iron Maiden - No Prayer for the Dying (1990)
As the 90's began with the promise of so much to come from the more extreme ends of metal, Iron Maiden released an album that clearly marked their decline. No Prayer for the Dying took the more commercial, catchy elements of Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and went mental with them. With Adrian Smith gone the band added Janick Gers to their line up in his place. With Smith's exit, so to seemingly went the penchant for solid song writing and interesting structures, replaced instead with absolute smash and grab, single fodder. The likes of Tailgunner, Holy Smoke and of course Bring Your Daughter...to the Slaughter (a track supposedly written by Dickinson for the movie soundtrack to Nightmare on Elm Street 5) all providing us with incessant itches in our brains for years to come.
They did this commerciality really well mind. Although the bulk of the album is soulless overall, audiences still lapped it up with over 3 million copies of the record sold across the globe. Even the less commercially attractive tunes such as The Assassin and Run Silent, Run Deep had enough of a chorus line to stick in the lug 'oles long after the album had finished and of course we cannot get any closer to blatant quick wins for zero effort than Hooks In You. What all these attempts at hits did was simply underline how awful the remainder of the record truly was. The lacklustre and instantly forgettable title track alongside the dreadful Fates Warning being perfect examples of this.
Add to this the genuine clumsiness of Public Enema Number One and Mother Russia and we have no individual track that I can find anything positive to say about. Playing it back through in my head (as I don't actually need to reach for the CD - which I guess is testimony to the "catchy quest" being a success) now it genuinely feels like a sell-out record and one that had I not only just been discovering metal at the time would likely have not made it in to my collection at all.