Iron Maiden - Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son(1988)

Track Listing:

1. Moonchild
2. Infinite Dreams
3. Can I Play With Madness
4. The Evil That Men Do
5. Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
6. The Prophecy
7. The Clairvoyant
8. Only The Good Die Young

Lineup:

• Bruce Dickinson
• Dave Murray
• Adrian Smith
• Steve Harris
• Nicko McBrain

the greatest metal album released in 1988, it took the fans by surprise by actually selling more than their previous effort. critics hail this as their most progressive album, it in fact was a concept album.

the commercial success of 'can i play with madness', the concert anthem 'evil that men do', the progressive overtones of 'the clairvoyant' & the prophecy(esp the cool outro with the classical guitars), & the arguably the greatest song ever written by Harris 'infinite dreams' make this a timeless classic.
dickinsons voice was at its best, the music was exceptionally melodic & pretty progressive in the fact being that they didnt sound like their previous written material. if 'somewhere in time' had that icy feel to it, this on tops it with a blizzard. harris used a lot of guitar synthesizers here to achieve that background icy feel that reverberates during the entire album.

but all good things must come to an end, & this was their last multi platimun selling classic. Adrian wanted to do something more & felt that his songwriting skills were not being appreciated as Harris suddenly wanted to take maiden back to the basic hard rock roots which was evident in their next NO PRAYER FOR THE DYING ALBUM. So he left maiden to form his own band called ASAP, (adrian smith & project). later he had formed another band called Psyho motel which was more hard rock, & had him manage both, guitar & vocal duties, & even later he joined bruce duckinson in 2 solo albums of his, ACCIDENT OF BIRTH & CHEMICAL WEDDING. anyways..

if you really wanna feel nostalgic, all you need to do is listen to this masterpiece.

my rating
9/10

review by Pritham 'Metal farmer' D'Souza