The Final Frontier

Product Information

And that is how I spent the early part of 2010 - producing The Final Frontier. Hope you enjoyed that.......

This isn't a concept album but the cover art and the flow of the songs give the feeling that it is. They present this effort as a risky proposition with an opener that drowns the listener with bustles of Harris' fingers and a quasi-spatial suspense atmosphere as if it was a fragment tape of Star Wars, enriched with the instrumental journey On The Run-like, their homologous version, obviously without being the super hit that the Pink Floyd song was. This album may not be essential and is the last thing you want to hear from this band, especially if you’re the one who listens to them frequently, but if you don't wanna hear repeated concepts ad nauseam and look for something novelty, this album is for you. Of course, no album out of this veteran fold would be complete without a towering collection of longwinded, labyrinth-like epics that somehow manage to find their way into familiar territory. As the aforementioned 2006 predecessor, over half of the songs on here break the 8 minute barrier. Unlike said album, these songs flow a little less gradually and almost remind of the band’s Bayley era epics, at times shifting abruptly but remaining constant for the most part. The winners in this bunch are “Starblind” and “The Man Who Would be King”, as they tend to mix things up a bit more and hearken a little closer to the space-like nature that the album is going for. Some of the other ones get a tiny bit convoluted, but for the most part the rest of the album is consistent in pursuing new territory while just keeping enough of Maiden’s signature character in place to keep from losing the audience. In this period, we often see the minimalist crossed keys art, which is used simply as a symbol, similar to the crossed Guns from "A Matter Of Life and Death". Begrand, Adrien (22 August 2010). "Iron Maiden – The Final Frontier". PopMatters . Retrieved 22 August 2010. So needless to say, when Iron Maiden announced their fifteenth album, expectations were high... especially given that it had the ominous title of ‘The Final Frontier’. Would this be the last album we’d ever get from this British metal institution? Spoiler alert: It wasn’t. But no one knew it at the time, so if this was in fact the end, it better be pretty damn good. This album would need to deliver on all fronts. There was no room for failure - Steve and the gang would need to release something no less short of a masterpiece.Mervis, Scott (14 July 2010). "Iron Maiden tour won't breach 'Final Frontier' ". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . Retrieved 21 March 2021. The Final Frontier (Media notes). Iron Maiden. EMI. 16 August 2010. {{ cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) ( link)

a b c "Имеющие уши. Что слушали россияне в 2010 году". Lenta.ru. 5 February 2011 . Retrieved 9 December 2022. The tour and film were both huge successes, yet Iron Maiden the band remained conscious of not being seen as a legacy or nostalgia act. It was therefore time to not only record a new album, but one that forged ahead in a number of new directions for the band.Hmmmm Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier, their worst cover ever and their best album since "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son".