Iron Maiden

Virtual XI

1998 EMI Records

Review by Vladimir Levin

Iron Maiden's 11th album's cover displays, in one corner, a young boy sitting on a hillock with a VR helmet strapped to his face. A group of schoolchildren are playing soccer (er, football!) in the field below. The other half of the cover features a red-eyed, ferret-like Eddy, with a hellish fiery world sprouting from his cracked-open skull, reaching out to grab the boy with his gnarled, bony hands and broken fingernails.

On the inside of the CD booklet, we find pictures of the Iron Maiden soccer club, complete with custom Maiden jerseys! We also find out that all of the graphics from the booklet were taken from Maiden's new video game, "Ed Hunter." This certainly explains the cover...

The cover art is indeed intriguing, and I was excited to listen to Maiden's second offering with their new vocalist, Blaze Bayley. Certainly, its dark and intense predecessor, X-Factor, boded well for this second effort in which Blaze would presumably have had more time to "gel" with the rest of the band. The album opens with a rollicking power ballad (entitled "Futureal"). It features Steve Harris' inimitable bass; elegant, melancoly, evocative; as well as the classic Maiden style of entwined twin-lead guitars playing simple, yet flawless melodies - and let's not forget Nicko's precise, energetic drumming. Unfortunately, I must confess that this album is nevertheless rather a disappointment. The production sounds quite flat, and Blaze's vocals seem to drone on and on without truly involving the listener. The very clean guitar sound makes me wish this were entirely an instrumental CD! The songs are nothing new to any Maiden fan. I found X-Factor to be considerably more original than this new album. Virtual XI features many of the same hooks and ideas as X-Factor and previous Maiden works without injecting anything truly interesting. It's a shorter album, 8 songs in 53 minutes, and it plays through without leaving any distinct impression. Perhaps Maiden tried too hard to simplify matters on this album, to stay consistent and keep their old fans "happy." But without progress there can only be stagnation, and rather than opening up a new world of possibilities, this album seems to quietly fade away; in that sense, it reminds me of another mediocre album by Maiden, No Prayer For the Dying, released in the early 90's.

Back to Index