Tag: retrospective

July 5, 2024 2024, symphonic metal, Therion 2 Comments

Celebrating a Masterpiece: Therion’s Sirius B / Lemuria Turns Twenty

This past May 24th, a quiet 20th anniversary passed for Therion’s twin 2004 albums Sirius B and Lemuria, with only the band themselves acknowledging the event via one of bandleader Christofer Johnsson’s retrospective Facebook posts he’s been fond of writing lately. It is predominantly the view of the metal community at large that Theli is the band’s widely accepted masterpiece, and rightfully so, that album being a genre defining landmark of symphonic metal and still one of the most vital metal albums of the 90s. Yet within the communities of Therion fans I’ve dabbled with, there is an almost pervasive belief that the band struck upon a pair of unheralded masterpieces with these twin albums. I have long held this belief myself, actually since first getting my hands on a pre-ordered double disc edition from Nuclear Blast all those many years ago. It was the first new Therion release I was anticipating, having only became a fan of the band shortly after the release of Secret of the Runes back in 2001, and to say that it lived up to the hype is an extreme understatement. I knew from press tidbits ahead of the release date that the scale of production on these two albums was massive, 170 musicians involved, including The City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, and an arsenal of folk instruments, most alien to the traditional format of heavy metal. But there’s a huge gulf between press release ambitions and the actual artistic execution thereof, and I wasn’t prepared for just how magnificent the latter could truly be.

The presence of a large orchestra was indeed a new thing for Therion, having only utilized small orchestras or ensembles on their prior four symphonic metal albums. If the goal in utilizing the Prague Philharmonic was to sound massive, Therion succeeded in spades, with the orchestra adding a lushness, depth and textural grandeur to the albums that they had never achieved before. Rounding out the symphonic sound were the expected hosts of professional classical vocalists and choirs, a Therion staple since Theli, but the band also chose to reintroduce the concept of actual lead vocalists once again. The most notable of whom was Christofer Johnsson himself, delivering lead vocals for the first time since his fierce barking on Theli, but really hearkening back to his guttural death growls on Symphony Masses. Also returning for guest appearances on select tracks was Piotr Wawrzeniuk, former Therion drummer and vocalist whose distinctive clean vocals graced those iconic Theli songs. But a fresh face entered the Therion world around this time in former Yngwie Malmsteen and then current At Vance vocalist Mats Levén. To say Levén would become an integral part of the Therion sound and line-up is an understatement, he became their touring vocalist for the supporting tour, and was a key component to the excellent follow up Gothic Kabbalah where he in many ways became the face of the band alongside fellow lead vocalists Snowy Shaw and Katarina Lilja. The vocal variety on these two albums are part of their success, creating a diverse listening experience that was fresh and unpredictable, a break from the past few albums relying mostly on lead choral vocals alone.

I underestimated just how difficult it would be to put into words why I believe these albums are genuine, Theli-level masterpieces and capstones of the symphonic metal genre. I could tell you that they sound epic… but that adjective gets thrown around so much by all of us in regards to metal, particularly of this vein, that it’s almost lost all meaning in the grand scheme of things. When I was listening to the albums repeatedly over these past few weeks, I tried to recall my memories of what it felt like when I first listened to them twenty years ago. One of those memories that tended to be top of mind was that I’d sit and listen to them on headphones while staring at their breathtaking cover artwork, courtesy of the great Thomas Ewerhard. The music on the albums sounded like it was telling the story of these bleak yet beautiful mythical landscapes depicted on both covers, or in some fantastical way, was recorded music that was obtained from those places. The flood plain stretching before skeletons of skyscrapers on the Lemuria artwork always struck me as evoking a sense of mystery, loss, and sorrow — while the hot, scorched earth desert plateaus of the Sirius B artwork brought to mind a feeling of eternity, elegiac and wondrous at once. That gigantic planet framing the bleak, blood red sky in the horizon with a menacing, eye of Sauron type of image in the center only added to the sense of the mystical and forbidden.

The music on both albums matched the imagination of their artwork, pushing aside any notions of aiming to be hooky and catchy (although those qualities exist in subtler, untraditional ways) and instead pulsing with an emotional ripple of the heady rush of indefinable spirituality. These tracks felt more like movements in a grander, overarching piece of music as opposed to just being regular songs, at times reminiscent of the pacing of a film score. One of the admittedly stranger references I keep coming back to is that sometimes the music here reminds me of the way the German group Enigma’s music was put together, with an ear towards unconventional structures and disparate elements that somehow gelled beautifully. Therion had been working with unique song structures for awhile by this point, with plenty of fine examples on their prior four albums. Yet here they seemed to let their artistic ambitions run free, veering wildly from one sequence to something else entirely, such as the way “Dark Venus Persephone” opts for an orchestral swell during the mid-song bridge instead of a traditional guitar solo, horns and woodwinds combining for a transcendent moment. Or the opening minute of “The Khlysti Evangelist”, where vinyl pops and crackles accompany what appears to be a lost recording of an opera, lulling us into a false sense of security before a battery of snare drums and Accept-ian riffage shakes us out of our reverie. The entirety of “An Arrow From the Sun” is a lucid example of this overarching tendency, from beautiful lead guitar figures erupting out of nowhere during the refrain to usher in a heavenly blanket of choirs, to a group of mandolins gracefully floating in towards the end without warning.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Therion is their tendency to utilize purely instrumental musical motifs as the “chorus” or refrain in lieu of the standard way of building one out of a vocal melody. It always made them feel more organically symphonic than any other artists tagged as symphonic metal, and lent their music an original identity that separated them from their peers. That tendency is on hyperdrive throughout both Sirius B and Lemuria, but a wonderful example of the band taking a more traditional vocal melody forward approach is on the title track “Lemuria”, a gorgeous, acoustic guitar meets swelling strings lament. Here Wawrzeniuk shines on lead vocals, delivering perhaps his most iconic moment during his time with Therion, his distinctly accented singing voice taking command during the chorus, sounding strangely alien in this lush context, yet somehow fitting perfectly. The lead guitar that echoes his vocal melody is pitch perfect in tone, and a vivid example of just how fluid Kristian Niemann is as a lead player, his work throughout these albums is jaw dropping. He contributed to songwriting on “Feuer Overtüre / Prometheus entfesselt”, and I love how he and Johnsson live for these unpredictable and exciting placements of lead guitar explosions, defying convention and listener expectations (you can normally tell when a solo is coming in standard metal tunes, not the case at all here). When I hear his signature tones on the fantastic Sorcerer albums he’s been on since leaving Therion, I’m reminded of all these incredible moments he laid down with Therion on albums such as these (he’s seriously one of my favorite guitarists of all time).

I mentioned a sense of the spiritual earlier, and I get those feelings when I listen to tracks such as the cinematic “Call of Dagon”, with its call-and-response horns and woodwinds musical figure that serves as the wordless refrain over rumbling bass and dirty riffing. I feel it during “Three Ships of Berik, Pt 1/ Pt 2”, a truly grandiose, perfect fusion of orchestra and metal where Johnsson’s death growls are contrasted by joyfully power metal-ian lead guitar figures and a regal, triumphant orchestral counterpoint. The glorious, dramatic, sturm und drang ending is so unexpected and spirit lifting that it still catches me off guard all these thousands of listens later. I would be remiss not to mention “The Wondrous World of Punt” in this context, because its perhaps my favorite moment on both albums, a piece of music that explored territory that recalled prior classics such as “Eternal Return” and “Clavicula Nox”, yet expanded on those ideas in broad, sweeping brushstrokes. It does indeed have the quality of an oil painting, intricately textured and detailed. I’m hard pressed to explain why this piece of music hits me so hard… there’s something tranquil in the vastness of it’s plaintive acoustic guitars, patient piano patterns, and mournful organ melodies. The distant sounding choir vocal arrangements, particularly in the middle passage, glide gracefully through the ambient space, and the combined effect is something I find so profoundly spiritual and meditative that I’m always emotionally affected when listening to this piece of music. That it ends so unexpectedly bright and upbeat is fitting for Therion, particularly the addition of a Greek sounding melody on mandolin towards the end as a why the hell not accent, a charming bit of levity to punctuate the band’s most breathtaking moment.

I could keep citing my favorite moments, but these are simply albums that have to be experienced if you haven’t by now, or revisited if you had in the past but didn’t vibe with them for whatever reason. Therion would go on to continue making great music (the first in the Leviathan trilogy was my 2021 album of the year), and they’ve even attempted projects that would rival the scope and ambition of this twin album recording project (three albums if you consider that leftover material was used for 2010’s Sitra Ahra). But here Christofer and the Niemann brothers reached for the stars and actually touched them, creating a pair of albums that truly transcended symphonic metal as we know it and redefined what was possible within it’s framework. Their uniquely combined talents, Johnsson’s inexplicable ability to articulate his musical vision into reality and the Niemann brothers ability to help steer that vision here (also shoutout to the underrated and awesome Richard Evensand behind the kit) are what gave them such a strong musical identity throughout this era of the band from Deggial through Gothic Kabbalah, and though I love the new lineup for what they’ve brought to the table, I can’t help but have a soft spot for this particular Therion lineup. I’m happy to have finally written something about these particular albums, even if it sounds like the ramblings of a fanboy. These albums have been so important to me for so long, and this anniversary felt like a good time to remind myself of their magnificence, and others of their existence.

February 29, 2024 2024, Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden Post a Comment

Arc of Space: The Remarkable Solo Career of Bruce Dickinson (Part Two)

Continuing this retrospective of Bruce Dickinson as a solo artist, we move into the most creatively fruitful period of his career. The Tattooed Millionaire/Balls to Picasso eras were characterized by accidents such as stumbling into recording opportunities and re-recording an album from scratch three times. He was trying to find his voice creatively and was still a member of Iron Maiden for most of it. In contrast, this next era was defined by Bruce entering into his own creatively and figuratively, he had left Maiden by the time Picasso emerged, and he plunged ahead with a new band that would become the Skunkworks lineup. This was also a strange time period in the music business when metal and hard rock artists were in gradual decline with the general public, yet could still collide with major label budgets based on virtue of their brand name alone. In Bruce’s case, this meant that his artistic efforts around this time were met with his record company’s casual indifference towards actually promoting them beyond throwing money at music videos and press tours. And in fairness to those companies, it was hard to know how to promote a veteran metal artist’s solo efforts at the time — grunge and alternative had changed things irrevocably in the pop culture landscape and even the mighty Maiden were feeling the brunt of its effects.

Yet this was also the most adventurous, throw caution to the wind period of Bruce’s career, from flying into war-torn, besieged Sarajevo in December of 1994 to play a surreal concert in a life threatening situation, to more trivial things such as completely cutting off his hair and refreshing his public image to a less “metal” profile (much to the chagrin of metal fans, who were about to go ballistic with the then upcoming Metallica album Load and its provoking band photos). He shook up his sound with Skunkworks, working with a decidedly not-metal band and the result was something that existed in between genres, not quite alternative or grunge nor metal. He then reunited with Roy Z and the Tribes of Gypsies guys and pioneered a modernized approach to traditional metal, and in doing so forged his own sonic identity towards the back half of the decade. I love reading old interviews from him during this era, and especially in hearing him more recently recall this period with the benefit of hindsight, because it’s very fearless nature was exactly what made him a compelling solo artist. He was never afraid to experiment in public, even at great personal expense and risk, and his failures were as interesting as his successes. I’ve tried to explain this to people in the past, that it wasn’t Bruce’s amazing records with Maiden that made me become a massive fan of the man personally (even though I loved those) — instead, it was the albums I’m discussing down below that really did it, and all the stories behind them.

Skunkworks (1996, Raw Power)

Perhaps the most misunderstood album in Bruce Dickinson’s solo oeuvre, Skunkworks is a document that reflects not only the times during which it was written and recorded with it’s nod towards mid-90s alternative rock, but also of Bruce’s ambition to step out of the shadow of Iron Maiden even more so than he had done on Balls to Picasso. People sometimes refer to this as his “grunge” moment, but I’ve always felt that was a narrow and simplistic description, perhaps hyper focusing on the involvement of alternative rock producer extraordinaire Jack Endino. Bruce’s true ambition at this moment in his solo career was to establish a new band called “Skunkworks”, though he was denied by his record company at the time and basically forced to release it under his name for commercial reasons. But in considering this new band that he pieced together for the Balls to Picasso tour that carried over into this album — and that he chose to co-write the entire album with his relatively unknown new guitarist Alex Dickson, it’s understandable that he was trying to do something genuinely fresh in his career as a musician. It’s true that Dickson was more of an alternative rock guitarist as opposed to having a hard rock or metal background like Roy Z, and you hear this in his approach both as a co-songwriter as well as his performances here. Like Roy Z on Picasso, Dickson was the only guitarist in the lineup, and would have to fill up more of the sound on his own, veering between rhythm and lead playing. I’ve always felt that the singular guitarist lineups on Picasso and particularly on Skunkworks were the key in connecting those albums to the sound of bands such as Faith No More, Rollins Band, and even Rush more so than the twin guitar attack of Maiden.

Those aforementioned bands come to my mind in fits and spurts when listening to this album, largely because of the three piece guitar/bass/drums stripped down attack, and especially how Dickson loosely veers between laying down an awesome riff that glides in and out of gloriously fuzzy and psychedelic lead patterns whenever appropriate, only to fall back into a solid groove alongside bassist Chris Dale. Yet Rush is really the band that I think is the most apt comparison here, because so much of what Dickson is doing both as a songwriter and a guitarist is crafting prog infused hard rock that is breathable, loosely held together with melodic threads and with ample space for Bruce’s vocals to come in and take things into a refreshing direction with his soaring tenor. The obvious examples here are the two singles “Back From the Edge” and “Inertia”, where the contrast between a sky high soaring vocal melody during the pre-chorus and chorus is such a sharp contrast to how rhythmic and tight the verse sections are. The result are hooks that explode from the speakers, full of vibrant energy and colorful sonic imagery. Personally I’ve always felt that this album was awash in the color blue, like sky blue streaked with pinks, reds, and purples like some glorious sunrise or sunset. That kinda fits with the theme present in tunes such as “Solar Confinement” and particularly “Space Race”, where Bruce sings “Just want to feel the starlight on my face / Reach out my hand and touch beyond”, a not so veiled allusion to his then blossoming pursuit of becoming a qualified pilot.

This prog-influence I’m hearing wasn’t purposeful I think, but the byproduct of Dickinson’s natural tendencies and range as a vocalist working in the context of a band that wasn’t very Maiden-y at all. There’s a strangeness to this album that makes it one of a kind, a meeting of musical worlds that normally did not cross paths during this era (the grungier albums by once reigning pop-metal artists like Warrant don’t count because that was them trying to be something they weren’t, whereas the guys in the Skunkworks lineup were the genuine article). And look, I know the album isn’t quite perfect. The first five cuts here from “Space Race” to “Solar Confinement” are bangers, but the album hits a middle lull with “Dreamstate” and “I Will Not Accept the Truth” which although I do rather enjoy in the context of a full album listen myself, I’m willing to admit that you really have to be in the right headspace for them to land. The album finishes rather strong however with some strong psychedelic moments and an absolute epic in “Strange Death in Paradise”. Overall, its an album that might land some punches on you the first time around, but is definitely is a grower overall, requiring listens over time to fully open up. In that sense, it was a first for Bruce, a mood based album that relied on a listener being in the right headspace for it rather than just racing right into your subconscious via calvary charge ala “The Trooper”. That explains its mixed reaction when it first came out (and again, the haircut likely didn’t help), but this album has aged well in it’s opinions online from fans over the years. Bruce himself regards it fondly and with a reverence that is refreshing, as opposed to trying to ignore it or pretend it never happened. Personally, I love Skunkworks and it exemplifies the adventurous spirit that I love about his solo career overall.

Essential Cuts: So this might be fairly obvious, but “Inertia” is one of the finest songs in Bruce’s solo discography to date, there’s just something so emotionally affecting about its vocal led intro over a loosely strummed chord sequence, a sharp change of pace from how we’d normally have heard him in the context of Iron Maiden songs with their usual intros (“Can I Play With Madness” a rare exception). It was also a sterling example of just how much he had grown as a lyricist within this new band context, because “Inertia” is an incredible piece of lyric writing, but truthfully he just delivered all across the board in that regard, and its one of the main reasons I think the album has aged so well. It was clearly a reference to his experience playing in the middle of beseiged, war-torn Sarejevo in December of 1994, when he and the band were snuck into the city center and famously played a show there under the threat of mortal peril. I’ll also cite “Back From the Edge” here because its such an undeniable tune, with a refrain that’s powerful, making full use of Bruce’s range, and he just sounds exceptionally sharp on it. I also wanna make special mention of “Octavia”, an overlooked gem in the back half of the album with Dickson’s most psychedelic guitarwork, an almost Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream tone on that lead guitar that is so warm and fuzzy and works as a beautiful counterpart to Bruce’s emotive vocal throughout.

Accident of Birth (1997, Raw Power)

Widely regarded as a close second to The Chemical Wedding as the best album of Bruce’s solo career, Accident of Birth arrived less than a year after he had finished touring the Skunkworks album. He said farewell to the guys in that band, who mind you, he’d been touring with since 1994, and reunited with both Roy Z from Tribe of Gypsies and the Balls to Picasso album as well as the one and only Adrian Smith. Eddie Casillas and Dave Ingraham, fellow Tribe members who also played on Picasso, were roped back into the fold to round out the rhythm section and together this line-up can be considered the most iconic for Bruce’s solo career, yielding two masterful albums and one crushing live album. Regarding the line-up change, Bruce was quoted in Rock Hard Germany at the time stating, “We came to the point where our musical aims were so far apart that there wasn’t any sense in working together any longer. I had certain ideas about the further development of Skunkworks that weren’t shared by the other band members. After I heard their song ideas for the last album and compared them with what I wanted to do, I sat down with them and said: ‘I want a crushing, politically incorrect metal album, but you seem to want to do something completely different.’ Their world seemed to turn around Beck and stuff like that, while I was in a metal mood. So I took a plane to California and wrote a big part of the material together with Roy Z”.

I wonder if Bruce’s change in mood towards returning to metal was fueled by the blowback he got for the changes in sound and image during that era. It may seem preposterous now (and then as well), but those things really did matter with metal fans (this was after all the era of Metallica’s Load and the absolute chaos that ensued with fans when that album was released). He’s been vocal about suggesting that management and the record company didn’t get Skunkworks, and that it was Roy Z who reached out to him with some unexpected new material: “It was actually Roy that dragged me back into some assemblance, because he called up and he said, ‘Listen, I’ve got some stuff and it’s like a metal record.’ And I wasn’t thrilled, I wasn’t really sure that I had anything to offer … Then he played me some backing-tracks he’d done for what was to become Accident of Birth down the phone and I thought ‘There is something there.'”. The resulting process was quick, and there’s not much of a major difference between the demos (later released on the expanded edition of the album) and the finished album versions. Adrian was brought in and contributed three songs (“The Road to Hell”, “Welcome to the Pit”, and “The Ghost of Cain”) which complemented what Roy was doing songwriting wise with a slightly more straightforward metallic take on the new sound. During interviews at the time, Bruce talked enthusiastically about how Roy had brought the heaviness of modern metal bands such as Biohazard to a traditional heavy metal songwriting approach. It was in many ways, a novel thing that no one else was really doing at the time, with European power metal bands staying faithful to the Helloween mode and older traditional bands such as Maiden carrying on as usual.

I wish I was one of those fans that got to hear the album directly when it was released, in the context of knowing what Skunkworks was all about. I came to Accident of Birth first, and Skunkworks after that, but I wonder how many nervous fans felt crestfallen at the first few seconds of the opening cut “Freak”, with its grunge fuzz toned guitar wail, only to get immediately punched in the gut when the slamming metal riff kicked in the doors. A purposeful bait and switch? Undeterminable. As an opener, “Freak” was a spectacular microcosm of what the new Bruce sound would offer — a slightly downtuned guitar sound built around dense, thick riffing and a fat rhythm section anchoring the bottom end. The contrast between this purposeful instrumental design and the traditional, melodic metal mode of songwriting created a vibrant, bracing sound that still sounds fresh and captivating today after decades of the “modern metal” sound permeating every subgenre of metal. Fellow bruisers such as “Starchildren” and “Welcome to the Pit” served as similar tone setters for the album, that this was not only the heaviest album you’ve ever heard Bruce sing on, but by far heavier than anything Maiden had put out (certainly not a slight, just a fact and a surprising one at that). These heavier tunes were a collective statement, that Bruce wasn’t afraid of trying to modernize his own sound and that this album wouldn’t sound out of place in a playlist with current bands.

For all the sonic heaviness of the album, there was a buoyancy to the tone of these songs that came through via the soaring lead melodies and of course, Bruce’s penchant for crafting uplifting, empowering vocal hooks. I’ve always thought “Road to Hell” had layers of depth to it despite the lyrics and riffs being very straightforward and relatively simple on the surface. Maybe its something about Bruce’s lyrics towards the back half where he contemplates how “We all have to live with our family inventions” — it rings even more autobiographical after having read Bruce’s book “What Does This Button Do?” where he detailed his rather turbulent childhood and home situation. And epics like “Darkside of Aquarius” and “Omega” were multifaceted, dynamic songs that unfolded in surges of heightened dramatic tension, the former built on passages that recall hints of Dio era Sabbath while the latter boasts one of the thickest groove riffs you’ll ever hear in a song that is inherently very un-groovy. I love “Omega” in all it’s progressive, moody, temperamental glory, especially the skyward aiming guitar solo midway through — but it also was an example of how Bruce was continuing the coming into his own as a lyricist that began on Skunkworks. Though “Accident of Birth” as a title track is very autobiographical in regards to Bruce (despite the hellish imagery), it also was an apt description for the creation of this album as a whole, an unexpected collaboration that reunited Bruce with his most successful writing partners, and launched a renaissance that would carry through to rejoining Maiden two years later.

Essential Cuts: Although I loved the heaviness of the album as a whole, the songs that left the deepest impression on me were the ones that were built on beautiful vocal melodies such as the powerfully epic “Taking the Queen”, where Bruce serenaded a plaintive lyric over a gentle, almost lullaby-like melody. That U-turn when the chorus hits is in my top ten favorite Bruce moments of all time, the sheer crackling power that erupts when those guitars kick in and he dramatically sings “The howling shriek of death in your eyes / The hawklord and the beast enter your room”. That layered, echoing effect on “enter your room! — just inject that in my veins please. Its the kind of moment that not only makes the song, but is emblematic of why I love the drama and theatricality of metal. In this same melodic vein, the wistful ballad “Arc of Space” sees Bruce delivering an emotionally wrought and longing vocal performance that paints a cinematic picture of a dreamlike, haunting vision. I’ve never been able to decipher what this song is supposed to be about, but I certainly know that it hits me hard and leaves a powerful impression every time I hear it. That gorgeous finger plucked acoustic guitar solo accompanied by an aching cello and violin just hits my heartstrings in a way few ballads ever have.

The Chemical Wedding (1998, Air Raid)

Finally, we arrive at the apex, not only of Bruce’s solo career but arguably some might say of metal in general in the late 90s. Frequently cited as one of the great metal albums of the decade, The Chemical Wedding is a marvel of worlds colliding, with the band further developing the down tuned, uber-heavy sound they began on Accident of Birth and fusing it with Bruce and Roy’s most inspired songwriting to date, all woven together with the literary inspiration of English poet William Blake. The collision of a truly modern metal sonic approach merging with some of the finest traditional metal songwriting of Bruce’s career resulted in a sound that was genuinely new, incredibly fresh — not just for Bruce, but for metal overall. In looking back on this record and when it was released, I defy you to find another album released before the The Chemical Wedding that accomplished something similar with such spectacular results. It was a leap forward for traditional metal, proof that the genre could sound vital, gritty, dark, and rich with depth. It was also refreshingly self-serious in an era when irony, effervescence, and humor were held in higher esteem by the music press. The band — Roy, Adrian, Eddie Casillas, and Dave Ingraham all returning and contributing to the songwriting in moments, had grown into this sound, the seeds being planted on tracks such as “Laughing in the Hiding Bush” and “Hell No” on Balls to Picasso, and of course most of Accident of Birth. As a result of this natural progression, the sound here is fully realized, the fruits of something that began organically and over the course of time. The true strength of the album however is that despite all it’s era defining greatness, it sounds strangely out of time, untethered to anything we associate with the late 90s, largely due to I think because it is a fully realized, self-contained work of art, a world unto itself and it can stand alone as such.

Bruce says that the genesis of all this began with his interest in alchemy leading him to think up the potential album title of “The Chemical Wedding”. In an interview with the guys behind the Bruce Dickinson Well-Being Network (the oldest Bruce fansite) he explained: “So then, normally when I start writing albums, I start off by going to bookstore and I just walk around the bookstore looking for strange stuff. I was just browsing and this thing caught my eye which was an encyclopedia in art history of alchemy… A big thick book with loads of great pictures in it, ranging from early pictures of alchemical engravings, right up to H.R. Giger and stuff like that. And what’s linking them all together is that they all have an alchemical thread to them. And Blake features very heavily in this book, both his paintings and his poetry. One of them was this painting of Urizen and Los which completely blew me away. This was at the time when I had written three or four songs for the album already… And I was stuck. I thought “Alchemy, yea it’s kind of interesting” but I’m not sure there’s another four songs I can write about alchemy that’s gonna be up to it, you know. Then all of a sudden… enter William Blake! So I go off to the bookstore and found “Selected poems of William Blake”. I started reading and there it was…”. That copy of “Selected Poems of William Blake” brought into focus Bruce’s interest in Blake’s alchemical symbology and reminded him of his introduction to Blake’s work when as a student he’d have to sing the hymn “Jerusalem”, adapted from Blake’s poem “And Did Those Feet In Ancient Times”. This convergence of ideas manifested into a lyrical theme that he wove throughout the album in a few tracks that were already musically composed by Roy, and others that had to be worked up from scratch.

It’s always wild to behold that intro to “King in Crimson”, with its nearly sludge metal crushing riffs, distorted bluesy leads and Bruce’s deep, expansively unfolding dramatic vocals delivering a truly inspired picture of gothic, occult terror. That combination of sounds instantly sets the tone throughout and crafts a sonic identity for the album that works as the nexus point for all the deviations explored on the rest of the songs. Such as on the ensuing title track, a song that veers between spacious, atmospheric psychedelia during the verses to a pulverizing, grinding riff sequence ushering in the epic refrain. This is such a gloriously majestic song, both musically and lyrically, and I sometimes think its the epic on the album when it actually clocks in at an economical four minutes flat. The actual epic on the album is “The Book of Thel”, a monstrous behemoth of a song built on a devastating riff progression and perhaps the rhythm section’s most thunderous display of window shaking fury on the album. It’s a deceptively long song that feels like it just sprints by in a flash, but maybe that’s due to the sheer awesomeness of the effective tension building minute long intro sequence or the climactic mid-song instrumental bridge. That passage, queued in by Casillas’ rumbly bass notes that unfurl into a devastatingly powerful riff, is one of those moments where you can’t help but start headbanging along (it gets me every time). Along with “Jerusalem”, these three tracks serve as the album’s tent poles so to speak, emotional pillars that support the different emotions and musical approaches that flow throughout the album’s entirety.

A lot of attention has gone to “The Killing Floor” as it was the first single and video released from the album, and it’s easy to see why it was selected as such. Built on swirling psychedelic textures and a thick, heavy groove, it was easily the best rhythmically strutting tune Bruce had ever concocted. The chorus of a group vocal shouting “Satan!” was certainly ear-catching and might have been considered slightly campy had it not been prefaced by downright chilling lyrics: “I’ve never been held by the hand of god / Who’s rocking the cradle, if he is not?”. The music video is worthy of mention here, a bit of 90’s weirdo music video camp that saw Bruce as a waiter in Satan’s restaurant (the latter of which was played by a hairdresser from Camden according to Bruce). One of the hidden gems of the album is “Machine Men”, tucked away near the end of the track listing but certainly worthy of possibly being considered a single just by virtue of how fully realized it’s refrain turned out. The first of the two slower paced yet doomily heavy tunes on the album, “Gates of Urizen” has strong Dio-era Sabbath vibes happening in its soulful songwriting, Bruce’s vocals interweaving with haunting guitar leads that seem to reverberate in space. The other is the album closer “The Alchemist”, a patient, thoughtful paean to conclude the album that ends with a beautiful vocalization before bowing out with a slowed down reprise of the chorus from the title track (“And so we lay / We lay in the same grave / Our chemical wedding day”), creating a kind of full circle moment for the album as a whole.

Essential Cuts: This album stands in my mind as such a complete, holistic (first time I’ve ever used that word on this blog I’m damn sure) listening experience that its hard to isolate individual tracks as “essential”, so take these as more of my personal favorites. First to mind is “The Tower”, which might be my favorite uptempo Bruce song of all time, this song being a propulsive, rhythmic masterpiece. Casillas bass lines here are so locked into this amazing groove, with Ingraham filling the spaces in between with a bouncy pattern, that you’re already engaged well before Roy and Adrian come swooping in. Bruce’s vocal melody design in this refrain is masterful, a heavenward spiraling ascending run that is layered to sound lush and full. The lead guitar melody that serves as the post chorus outro is simply iconic, one of the more memorable guitar riffs of the entire Bruce discography, to say nothing about how devastating that thoughtfully articulated solo is towards the back half. I’m also going to cite “Jerusalem” here, because this song is at once plaintive in its hymn like simplicity (borrowing Blake’s lyrics help), and yet joyfully exuberant and majestically powerful. The choice of scaled back instrumentation throughout the first half of the song has always struck me as a particularly inspired decision, lots of chiming acoustic guitars and letting Bruce’s voice breathe and echo and fill the space. The twin harmony guitars joining together for that emotional guitar solo in the second half is just one of those glory claw to the sky inducing moments, sounding so righteous and profound by itself.

(Look forward to part three where we’ll conclude with Tyranny of Souls, and of course The Mandrake Project)

November 27, 2023 2023, Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden 2 Comments

Arc of Space: The Remarkable Solo Career of Bruce Dickinson (Part One)

To say that Bruce Dickinson’s solo career is the greatest of any vocalist in metal history is a bold claim, because you’re going right up against titans like Dio and Ozzy. The latter is a stretch, he’s made more mediocre to bad albums than good to great ones. Dio’s solo work however was consistent throughout his career, and legendary, iconic even, in its greatest moments. I will be making a case for Dickinson however, not so much based on his vast array of masterful songs and often fully realized albums — of which he has many, but on the incredible diversity found within his solo discography, his willingness to explore and expand into new sounds, and his lack of fear in experimenting in public. His discography ranges from bouncy, cheery hard rock to emotionally charged balladry; to proggy alternative-metal explorations; and onto dark, menacing metal records that shook with such vitality and earth-shaking heaviness that they made Iron Maiden’s 90s era albums seem tame in comparison.

I was late to the party in regards to Dickinson’s solo career, having only begun my own explorations of it after he had reunited with Maiden on 2000’s Brave New World. It was just one of those inexplicable actions of being a teenager, but at the time I held an innate prejudice towards solo material of any artist in any genre — my belief being that if the music wasn’t good enough for whatever band an artist was associated with, then it was probably not worth hearing. It was all justified in my mind, you see Holy Diver wasn’t a Dio solo album, it was the debut album of Dio, the band. What can you do about a mindset that attributes so much to one Vivian Campbell?! In retrospect I can see that it might’ve been a side-effect of that teenage need to identify oneself according to groups or brands — it was “(insert band name here) or GTFO”. As further testament to just how seriously I internalized this logic, I refused to listen to Dave Mustaine’s MD 45 until years and years later.

The catalyst for breaking free from such a close-minded view was my stumbling onto a Dickinson gem called “Tears of a Dragon”. It was a discussion on the Megadeth.com forums that prompted me to find this song, when a random post by some forgotten user name insisted that the song had Dickinson’s greatest vocal performance ever, above any Maiden songs. I searched around for it, found its music video streaming in Real Player (yes that existed, it wasn’t a dream), waited for it to buffer, and for the next few minutes I was mesmerized. I don’t need to convince anyone here do I? “Tears of a Dragon” was a watershed for Dickinson as a songwriter. It was a brooding, melancholic, wistful ballad that served as his confessional about his rapidly accumulating feelings about the possibility of leaving Iron Maiden. Its emotional resonance relied entirely on Dickinson’s lyrics and his approach to them. Never before had the Air Raid Siren sounded so pensive, hesitant, and vulnerable — nor sung words that lacked any semblance of blood and thunder bravado.

From there I plunged in head long, buying up his catalog in rapid succession, beginning with his just then released 2001 Best Of collection. It was both an imperfect and perfect starting place in that with the benefit of hindsight I can see how much its tracklisting was woefully inadequate, however it did work as a microcosm in illuminating just how wildly varied and diverse his catalog was. I listened to that collection to death, particularly its bonus disc of assorted rarities which enthralled me to no end due to its even more bewildering array of musicality. After a few months I had all of his solo albums, and devoured them, listening and re-listening and listening again. I scoured the internet for old interviews of Dickinson’s from every album release era, and wound up with a pretty decent collection of them, their collective contents threading together an undertold story.

What that story illuminated about Dickinson’s solo career is the sheer risk he wagered in reaching for it in an era of turbulent pop-cultural change; the emotional turmoil that ensued for him privately, and the tenuous nature of events that led him to soldier on instead of quitting music as a career altogether — the possibility of which was closer than anyone suspected. But lets start at the beginning, with the first two albums in his solo discography that were wildly different from one another, and exemplified the wild creative extremes he’d come to explore in many directions over the course of the 90s and beyond.

Tattooed Millionaire (1990, Columbia Records)

Dickinson’s solo career began in an inconspicuously innocent manner, as he himself describes in the liner notes to his solo Best Of collection as “a very enjoyable accident”. An invitation by his publishing company (Zomba Music) to contribute a song to a film soundtrack (1989’s cinematic masterpiece A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child) led to Dickinson getting in touch with an old friend, an out of work guitarist named Janick Gers formerly of Ian Gillan’s solo band. The ensuing song was “Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter”, a clunky yet endearing tongue-in-cheek howler that impressed Steve Harris enough that it was yanked off the shelves so Maiden could co-opt it for their 1990 No Prayer for the Dying album.

Long before the song received its unlikely UK number one hit status in early 1991 however, it had generated enough behind the scenes interest from Zomba and Sony/Columbia records to lead to another invitation for Dickinson, this time to record an entire album. Zomba had then just recently acquired a recording studio, Battery Studios (oddly enough, it was the newly christened half of the legendary Morgan Studios, where just about every major UK rock album in the 70s was recorded), and they needed someone to come in and give their new toy a spin. Dickinson received the studio time essentially on their dime, all while assuring them he had enough songs already in the can to complete a full length album. He didn’t.

Holed up in the front room of Gers airport-adjacent Hounslow home, Dickinson and his new guitarist wrote the entire album in two weeks. It was a complete departure from the sophisticated complexity of Maiden’s preceding Seventh Son of a Seventh Son album in both tone and structure. Tattooed Millionaire was a wild, loose, no frills rock n’ roll album that owed more to AC/DC than anything resembling Maiden’s progressive influences. Dickinson would comment, “We took all our favorite rock and roll cliches, bundled them all together, and recorded it”, a fitting summation of the album, but it was still filled with inspired performances. Featuring the aforementioned Gers as the lone guitarist, along with Andy Carr on bass, and Jagged Edge’s Fabio Del Rio on drums, Dickinson’s band was in essence a three piece in purely instrumental terms. Gers would record both rhythm and overdubbed lead parts on the album, but as heard on the Dive Dive Live! concert video this lineup was downright aggressive, raw, and dare I suggest punky when playing live.

That rawness began on some of the deep cuts on this album, on songs such as “Dive Dive Dive!” with its almost Guns N’ Roses-ish snakey riffs and Dickinson’s half raspy / half snarled vocal delivery, as well as on “Son of a Gun” and “Gypsy Road” where he dips down into roots-y Aerosmith territory. On those and other songs where this strange British take on Americanized guitar rock really works, they come across as a batch of a fun, light-hearted, feel-good rock n’ roll songs sung by a vocalist who’s far too skilled for them. That’s not a critique on Dickinson’s vocals, but I’ve always felt that Tattooed Millionaire was an unusual sounding album because of that disparity. A song as zany as “Zulu Lulu”, or “Lickin’ the Gun” for example sounds like it would work better if performed by ZZ Top or Steven Tyler, more than the man who so epically sang “Hallowed Be Thy Name”. Dickinson himself would point out in the liner notes of the album’s re-release, “Some of the tracks hold up extraordinarily well… Some of them maybe not so much… In general, I think the stuff that has some really good melodies is the stuff that holds up”.

Essential Cuts: There’s little to link this rather inauspicious debut with the drastic musical experimentation he’d come upon in his next two solo records, but the seeds for those future outings can be detected in Dickinson’s success at writing a pair of breezy, excellent hard rock singles in the title track and the poignantly autobiographical “Born In ’58”. As a song, “Tattooed Millionaire” is directed at the era’s Los Angeles rock stars and their entourage/groupie fueled lifestyles (there are rumors that its about Nikki Sixx specifically, but I’ll let you Google those). Its perhaps the album’s smartest moment, a bit of satire that perhaps Jonathan Swift himself would approve of, as Gers and Dickinson crafted a pop-metal gem in the musical vein of those very bands the song’s ire is directed towards. So well crafted is the song that even its verses are in perfectly catchy lock-step, “He got a wife / She ain’t no brain child / ex-mud queen of Miami”. When Dickinson cuts loose on the high register, layered vocal chorus, he tonally shifts the song from angry judgment to that of liberating, blissful contentment.

Where “Tattooed Millionaire” is full of brash indictment, “Born in 58” is more concerned with contemplation — in many ways this is Dickinson’s first attempt at writing something personal, well, ever. Using his grandfather as a framing reference, Dickinson’s lyrics here deal with a pointed criticism of modern society and its lack of values. It can almost be viewed as a companion piece to “Tattooed Millionaire” in its dissatisfaction with something external, but here Dickinson seems to be speaking from some internal sense of loss, “On and on, we slept till dawn / When we awoke, we hardly spoke”. Whatever the song’s true meaning, its been a criminally underrated tune, and Dickinson’s vocal performance here demands some extra attention, particularly in how effortlessly he nails the verse segue into the chorus, “And men were still around / who fought for freedom / stood their ground and died!”. That explosive vocal is my favorite part of the song, one of those classic Dickinson moments that would never exist were the song in the hands of a lesser singer.

Though I’m not featuring the song or its fantastic music video among the clips below, I would be remiss not to talk a bit about the excellent David Bowie cover of “All The Young Dudes” on the album. Actually, its a Mott the Hoople song, but Bowie wrote it, you know how these things worked in the seventies… artists were songwriters or performers or both. Dickinson had performed the song cold at a charity show at Wembley Arena, and surprised by his own success with it on stage decided that the band would tackle it for the record. Frankly its a brilliant, inspired cover, and risking blasphemy I’ll say its the definitive version of the song, even nearly twenty years removed from its written era. The key lies not just in Dickinson’s flexible yet strong vocal delivery, but in Gers far more melodic and rounded treatment of the guitar motifs throughout the song. The original has guitar figures that sound incomplete and unfinished in comparison, Gers just seems to own this song and he’s really the star of it, delivering his best individual performance on the album.

Balls to Picasso (1994, Mercury Records)

The pivotal album of Dickinson’s career not only as a solo artist, but as a member of Iron Maiden, Balls to Picasso has a long and tortured history in terms of development and what it meant in the greater scheme of things for the man himself. Where to begin discussing such things? Well, the album’s gestation itself seems a good place to start, and for that we go backwards from its 1994 release date all the way to pre-June 1992, while Dickinson was still a member of Iron Maiden and on the verge of going on the road for the Fear of the Dark World Tour. Seemingly picking up where he left off, the first iteration of the album in its rudimentary state was not much different from the feel and style of Tattooed Millionaire, reinforced by bringing aboard that album’s producer in Chris Tsangarides and this time the entirety of Jagged Edge as backing musicians (by this point they were known as Skin). Dickinson immediately felt that he was just going through the motions and not really challenging himself, an important tidbit to point out because that’s also precisely what he was beginning to feel within Maiden.

Those initial sessions were immediately broken up, and upon the advice of Maiden’s manager, the infamous Rod Smallwood, Dickinson got in touch with famed producer Keith Olsen of so many platinum/multiplatinum albums in the 70s and 80s (most notably, Olsen produced the now classic self-titled 1975 Fleetwood Mac album that introduced Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks into the lineup). The first thought was that Olsen would be able to work the same reconstructive magic he used for Whitesnake’s pair of late 80s albums that were waylaid by personnel changes and delays. The tapes were brought to Los Angeles, but it soon became obvious that simply re-edting material wasn’t a viable strategy in this case. It was decided that the tapes would be shelved and a new album created entirely from scratch, and Dickinson saw this as the perfect moment and opportunity to try something daring. He explains in the Best Of liner notes that he would begin by “taking a radical new direction, away from big-hair-metal and 80s cliches towards something dark, scary, joyful, intense, except I wasn’t quite sure how to do it”, and he adds, “This was a terrifying moment.”

It was January of 1993 by this time, and for six weeks Dickinson toiled, working on material that select chunks of would later surface as future b-sides that showcased a very “Peter Gabriel-y vibe” (Dickinson’s own description). The album was finished but Dickinson wasn’t satisfied, feeling that “deep down I know it wasn’t right and bits of it were downright embarrassing, but nevertheless it had the seeds of something good, and they were contained in a track called “Tears of a Dragon””. Those Los Angeles Olsen sessions also introduced Dickinson to a band called Tribe of Gypsies that was recording their album down the hall in the same studio. He stepped into their recording room one night to hear what they were doing and was blown away by their Latin infused take on hard rock. It was also the beginning of his long friendship and working partnership with Tribes guitarist Roy Z, the man whose presence launched the third iteration of what would become Balls to Picasso.

What Dickinson saw in the Tribe of Gypsies’ musical approach was an emphasis on a gritty rhythm section, playful percussion, with a melodic core that was simultaneously authentic and emotional (and he’s right, seriously, everyone owes it to themselves to check out the band’s excellent debut album). In the 1994 Kerrang! interview for the album’s release, Dickinson affirmed, “I wanted to use percussion and different rhythms in a way that’s never been done before… What’s been lacking in this form of music for so many years is groove. Things just became regimented into what’s now become the Maiden gallop or the AC/DC plod.” So he asked for the Tribes’ help and they agreed to be borrowed and together Roy Z and Dickinson discovered a writing partnership that resulting in an immediate outpouring of new songs. These new songs replaced everything written for the previous two failed album attempts, except for the aforementioned “Tears of a Dragon”, which Roy Z loved and managed to improve upon with a heartfelt, note perfect guitar solo.

The resulting third-times-a-charm Balls to Picasso is still a mixed bag to this day — to be praised for its uninhibited sense of ambition and its massive leap from the “AC/DC plod” rock n’ roll of Tattooed Millionaire, but with the acknowledgement that some of its ten cuts simply fell flat. Personally I suspect the lackluster production (courtesy of Olsen’s engineer Shay Baby) is at fault, because a song like “Laughing in the Hiding Bush” sounds absolutely massive when heard on the 1998 Scream For Me Brazil live album, but oddly muted and wet-ragged here. Fans and Dickinson himself agree in retrospect that the album should’ve been produced by Roy Z himself, given what he’d bring to the table in the future as a producer. That being said there are some moments where I think the songwriting itself is at fault, such as on back to back album openers “Cyclops” and “Hell No”, songs that seemed to either be in need of editing or some extra tempo based punch in their verse sections.

As a result, the album is ascending in quality, starting off sluggishly only to get increasingly better and better as it goes along, culminating in the glorious “Tears…” finale. But “1000 points of Light” has a sharp chorus that sounds somewhat similar to early 90s Queensryche (if only the verses weren’t so ho-hum), and I’m big on the steady burning “Fire”, with its almost funky hook line in the chorus. One of the most underrated cuts is “Sacred Cowboys”, which boasts a pulse pounding chorus with lyrics that could’ve been the basis for a rather interesting music video. And then of course there’s “Shoot All the Clowns”, a song that Dickinson was arm-twisted into writing at the behest of Mercury Records, who were interested in releasing the album. Bruce tells the story best (check out his Anthology DVD for his funny recounting of the tale) but suffice it to say his “guidance” on the song was a cassette copy of Aerosmith’s Rocks shoved under his door with a sticky note on it saying “something like this would be good”. Its actually a rather hooky, groove-laden song with nice musical moments but marred by godawful lyrics. I agree with Dickinson’s take that its music video was actually better than the song.

Its worth emphasizing that without a solo record deal in place in 1992, Dickinson birthed this difficult album at great personal expense, in fact he paid for all of the recording sessions plus travel expenses himself, including the massive costs of flying out the Tribe of Gypsies to England to complete the album proper. It made his early 1993 decision to announce his departure from Maiden all the more risky, because although he still had the financial benefit of fulfilling his upcoming last tour with Maiden (the fraught Real Live Tour) he was effectively an unsigned artist with a much lighter bank account hoping that a good, pro-active label would pick it up. Dickinson and half of Mercury Records roster was dropped a mere three months after the album’s release, enough time for them to pay for a pair of music videos and some basic promotion, but the album was not a commercial success. It wasn’t even a complete artistic success in its own right, but it certainly was a victory for Dickinson in proving to fans and media that he could do something different apart from Maiden.

Essential Cuts: The most vivid examples of what that something different could be are found in the album’s two best songs; the Latin-flavored ballad “Change of Heart”, and the epic “Tears of a Dragon”. The former is an overlooked gem on this album, and one of the moments where Roy Z’s Tribe of Gypsies flavor really shines through with his dazzling touches of acoustic guitar flourish and flamenco-styled runs. The lyrics lament the end of a relationship, a relatively sedate topic, but they’re written from the perspective of a narrator that seems both able and unable to accept what’s happened. From sitting “alone at a window”, depressed to no end of course, he affirms that he’ll “be there, catching your tears / Before they fall, to the ground” — all while acknowledging that she’s had enough of their relationship: “You, you’re walking away / You couldn’t stay / You had a change of heart”. Dickinson’s vocal in the chorus is simply magnificent, particularly when backed up by harmonized vocals in specific moments. But the star of the song is Roy Z with his utterly gorgeous Latin-rock styled guitar solo, the kind of thing I wish he did more of on this album.

Then of course there’s “Tears of a Dragon”, and what else needs to be said about this song? Its not just one of Dickinson’s finest moments as a vocalist overall, but it would rate serious consideration for being one of the greatest metal ballads of all time. I’ve always appreciated just how personal Dickinson went here, essentially laying out his emotions for all to see like the “blood on the tracks” Bob Dylan once spoke of. Its a song about Dickinson’s dawning realization that he needed to leave Iron Maiden, but while that’s specific to him — it’s universality makes it a song about facing your fears and in fact surrendering to the fear. Regarding the song’s spiritual essence, Dickinson was fond of a Henry Miller quote that declared, “All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.” It was this encapsulating quote that stayed in his mind as he wrote this song and as he made the decision to leave Iron Maiden, feeling that it was the only way for him to grow as an artist and as a person.

I’ll admit that its a song that hits my emotional center when I’m receptive to it, which is also why I’m very judicious about when and where I listen to it. Its one of those songs that’s so powerful that I actually avoid listening to it when I’m in a frivolous, music hungry mood — it’s meant for more than that. The odd drunken, emotional sing-a-long with friends has happened a few times with this as our rousing soundtrack, but even in that hazy state, I’m still left punctured by its dagger sharp subtext. I think there are things in all of our lives that we’re afraid of, and most of it usually concerns the fear of taking a risk or plunging into that darkness headlong. In that regard “Tears of a Dragon” can often be uncomfortable to listen to, a reminder of what hasn’t been done yet — but we need these reminders. I’ll be remiss if I don’t mention just how well its music video has held up over the years, some of those panoramic hill-side shots are still stunning. They could lose the goofy, bald fat man and his mid-nineties computer generated pixie dust scenes, but everything else really works in an almost dreamy, nightmarish vision kind of way. If you haven’t already, also check out the two other versions of the song found on the re-issued edition of the album with a second disc of bonus tracks, they’re special in their own right.

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