For any fan of great music, the release of a new album by a favourite band or artist is always a milestone in one’s life. And when we’re talking about a new album from THE GREATEST BAND OF ALL F***ING TIME, then that is an event all by itself, to be appreciated over and above the albums issued by less noteworthy acts.

Senjutsu is IRON MAIDEN’s 17th studio album, which I’ve been listening to almost non-stop since I got my grimy mitts on it, pretty much the day it was released. And I’m not going to mess about on this one:

It’s EPIC.

Overall Impressions

Now, I’ve seen reviews of the album that claim that, if you enjoyed the previous album, The Book of Souls, you will almost certainly enjoy this one. I disagree with this view. The two albums are radically different, except in the length of the songs – that’s about the only similarity. I think that if you like the more long-winded, proggy direction that the band have taken for the last, oh, thirty years, then you’ll like this one. Otherwise, though, you’re in for a tough slog – and if you’re one of the old-school fans still stuck on The Number of the Beast, then you’re SOL.

The cold, hard fact is that the days of barn-burners like “The Trooper” or “The Prisoner” are long done. Every one of the band members is in his sixties – the drummer, Nicko, is damn near SEVENTY. And it shows. The pace of the songs on this album is significantly slower than on TBoS, and Nicko and ‘Arry never get up to the speeds of Ye Goode Olde Dayes.

That’s just the way it is. Deal with it.

Every IRON MAIDEN album is essentially unique and deserves to be judged on its own, as well as alongside the other works that the band has produced. Senjutsu is a remarkable work when looked at in isolation. It is even more astonishing when you compare it with the band’s other works.

Comparative Rankings

Now, let’s be clear, this is NOT the best IRON MAIDEN album of all time. Not even close. For me, that hallowed title is, and always will be, reserved for either Powerslave or Seventh Son of a Seventh Son – I sort of vacillate between the two, and from time to time I actually find myself thinking that maybe The Number of the Beast deserves that moniker. (Then I listen to “Gangland” and “Total Eclipse”, and I return to my senses.)

Nor is this album as good as TBoS. The songwriting is not as strong, the musicianship is not as technically brilliant, there are far fewer surprises, and there are several very repetitive, very redundant moments on it where you find yourself thinking, “dude, I’ve heard them do this EXACT melody like 20 times before”.

Even so, this album is definitely right up there. I would put it somewhere between The Book of Souls and Brave New World in terms of sheer excellence, and way, WAY above the other three albums that they’ve done since the full band reformed in 2000. This album is simply superb.

The Songs

Senjutsu has its flaws, unquestionably. But they are relatively minor compared to what IRON MAIDEN has pulled off with this work. It is magisterial, brooding, extremely dark – more so even than The X Factor. This is NOT a light or easy album that you listen to, get an emotional high from for a few days, and then put away. This is instead an album that rewards you the more you listen to it, just like its predecessor, because of musicianship, the songwriting, the lyrics, and most of all the interactions between six consummate professionals who have nothing left to prove to ANYONE.

Everything you want and expect from an IRON MAIDEN album is here. The heavy, solid bass sound, Nicko’s beast-mode drumming, the thin production on the three guitars that make it sound like you’re listening to half a guitar, the epic duelling guitar solos, the completely distinctive playing styles of all three lead guitarists on full display, and of course Bruce Dickinson’s monumental vocal performances – they’re ALL present and accounted for.

Let’s take a look at the songs in turn to get an idea of just how good this album really is.

Senjutsu

Things kick off with the slow, brooding title track, full of lyrics about war and conquest. The song’s lyrics appear to hail from feudal-era Japan, which greatly influenced the album artwork and cover aesthetic. This is the reason why Eddie looks like a daemonic samurai in his latest incarnation. I didn’t know what to make of this track the first time I heard it – I thought it was a bit slow and boring, without the time and tempo changes that made “If Eternity Should Fail” such a great song from TBoS. But the more I listen to it, and the deeper I get into the lyrics, the more I like it.

Stratego

This is much more typical IRON MAIDEN – galloping (well, cantering, these days), heavy, well-paced. This is solid red meat from Janick Gers, who shows exactly why he is such an important part of the band’s songwriting capabilities. The lyrics reflect a thoughtfulness about war and death that you won’t find in early songs, but you WILL see on their later songs, such as “Fortunes of War”. No messing about here – it’s a great song, right up there with the best of their canon.

The Writing on the Wall

Here the band takes a very unusual and unexpected turn. This is not “stoner rock”, as you might mistakenly think the first time you listen to the song. It is in fact heavily influenced by English folk, and you can very clearly hear that in the melodies of the track. Adrian Smith and Bruce “THE DYSLEXIC VOICE OF DOG” Dickinson have put together a dark, powerful song reflecting upon the corruption of the modern world and the ways in which humanity hurtles toward its doom.

Lost in a Lost World

Here is the first genuine standout track of the album. Everything up until this point has either defied expectations or stuck squarely to the “MAIDEN template” of galloping rhythms and theatrical lyrics. But this is the first song that makes you really sit up and go, “whoa, did NOT expect THAT“. This is signature Steve Harris songwriting – lots of time changes, harmonised guitars, heavy pounding drums, and that snappy bass line underneath it all. The song is, as far as I can tell, about the last days of the Red Indians as their tribes and ways of life die around them. It is poignant, powerful, genuinely brilliant stuff.

Days of Future Past

If that track showed what ‘Arry can really do, H and Bruce Bruce kick it up a notch with this next one, a brilliant song about a sinful fallen angel condemned to walk the Earth and observe its slow death until the Rapture. Adrian’s skills are on full display both as a songwriter and a lead guitarist – his solos are perfect for this song. The needle-sharp opening, the heavy chorus, Bruce’s monumental voice belting out the lyrics – it’s all brilliant. This is one of my favourite “shorter” MAIDEN songs ever from their latter days – it’s that good, it stands right up there with songs like “These Colours Don’t Run” and “Death or Glory”.

The Time Machine

Now this is a bit of a weird one, but it’s very, very good. I quite like its lyrics, and damn if it ain’t all straight from the H. G. Wells novel of the same name. It has the same strengths and weaknesses of most songs written by ‘Arry – I’ll come back to that below – but Janick’s songwriting provides a solid backbone for Steve’s lyrics and rhythms, especially after the bridge and in the middle section, which is pure Jan. And when it kicks into high gear, you know you’re in for a treat – this song is going to play VERY well live.

Darkest Hour

Things get all slow and dramatic again here, with a genuinely mournful ballad written from the perspective of an ailing and deeply depressed Winston Churchill at the terrible price that he and his country had to pay for fighting fascism. I’m not quite down with Bruce’s take on the history involved – the evidence we have in front of us tells us clearly that WWII was, above all, Churchill’s War – but this is a powerful, moving song about the heavy cost of true leadership in a time of crisis.

Death of the Celts

This is pure Steve Harris. You can basically think of it in terms of “The Clansman, Pt. II”, because that is basically exactly what it is – a lyrical exploration of the glory of death in battle for the preservation of one’s tribe and culture. It’s great stuff, but it’s also boring in places, because Steve Harris pulls out literally EVERY TROPE IN HIS BOOK when writing it.

The Parchment

I’m not sure what to think of this one, to be honest. I initially didn’t much care for it – I found it to be rather boring. But then it kicks into gear properly about halfway through, and ends up being very good. Nonetheless, I consider this to be the weakest song on the album – it is a bit self-indulgent, a bit repetitive, and there is simply far too much of a feeling that “I’ve heard this before”. That is because you almost certainly have – the rhythms and melodies borrow heavily from past songs written by Steve. But this song really redeems itself around the halfway mark, where it gets very good, very fast.

Hell on Earth

But the final song cements this album’s status as an all-time classic. It is simply AMAZING. It starts with your typical 3-minute ‘Arry intro that lulls you into complacency and even boredom, and then out of freakin’ NOWHERE it roundhouse-kicks you in the head and proceeds to kerb-stomp you straight into next week. To me, this is the very best song on the album. It is incredibly dark, almost despairing in tone, but the musicianship is incredible. This was the standout track that grabbed me when I first heard the album, and it’s stayed that way ever since. The lyrics are full of reflections on war and death, on the futility of life lived in anger and of seeing loved ones on the other side. The final passage of the song leaves you with a sort of musical after-image, like you’ve stared directly into a violent explosion that left strange images on your retinas for days afterwards.

Negatives and Problems

Taking the album as a whole, my single biggest criticism is one that I’ve hinted at above several times: Steve Harris’s songwriting.

Now, don’t get me wrong, ‘Arry is an INCREDIBLE songwriter. He literally is IRON MAIDEN. He is its beating heart and its soul. But he has a penchant for dicking around with 3-minute intros that really rob his best songs of their momentum and impact. You see this tendency on full display with this album. More than that, there are entire sections of various songs that you could swear you have heard, note for flippin’ note, in other IRON MAIDEN songs of the past.

And that is the problem. Parts of the album feel like they were copied and pasted straight from previous outings. This leads you to think – incorrectly, as it happens – that Steve is getting lazy in his old age.

Fortunately, the sheer power and bombast and lyricism of his songs prevents the “same old thing” feeling from being endemic. This actually is a distinctive standout entry into the legendary history of the band. Each song stands on its own, each one builds the feeling of the album up, and each one can be enjoyed on its own merits.

This is a dark album, though. The last time that we saw an album anywhere near this dark was The X Factor – and that was when Steve Harris was going through a divorce, and his father died when the band was on tour. The lyrics from that album reflected his inner pain. Here, though, I am unaware of any such personal tragedies that befell him. Indeed, the album was recorded before the Coof Scamdemic hit, so I’m genuinely curious as to why the album is so dark.

Verdict and Final Thoughts

The last issue to note is the length of the album itself. At 82 minutes, this is not quite as long as TBoS, but it’s still the second-longest studio album they’ve ever recorded. And that’s saying something, given their past outings. Interestingly, however, Senjutsu does not FEEL like a long album. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I can listen to this album and not really feel the passage of time.

So now we get straight to a numerical ranking of the album. And this is where it gets a bit tricky, as always with an IRON MAIDEN album. You see, asking me to rate an IRON MAIDEN album “objectively” is like asking an eight-year-old to tell you which flavour of ice cream is best and why. It’s an exercise in utter futility. When it comes to IRON MAIDEN albums, I am INCAPABLE of being objective, at least in relation to other bands.

Therefore I am OBVIOUSLY going to give it a 5.0/5. It’s IRON MAIDEN, dude – THE GREATEST FREAKIN’ BAND OF ALL TIME, my favourite band ever, the band that defined my adolescence and my love of heavy metal.

However, if you ask me to compare it to other IRON MAIDEN albums, then of course I can do that a lot more easily. And as I have stated above, this is not as good as The Book of Souls – but it’s still undeniably excellent.

So, compared to other IRON MAIDEN albums, I’d rate this a 4.3/5 – better than Brave New World, not quite as good as The Book of Souls, still not quite up there with The Number of the Beast, Seventh Son, and Powerslave, yet still far, FAR better than anything else that they’ve ever done.

IRON MAIDEN is a band with absolutely nothing to prove to anyone, whose band members have earned the right to do as they see fit through DECADES of hard work. They have conducted themselves at every turn with integrity, strength, and love for the craft and the fans. That is why the entire metal world respects them so much, and that is why we forgive them for their musical indulgences – which you’ll find plenty of on this album.

In the final analysis, Senjutsu is a GREAT album and deserves to be listened to many, many times. It is intensely rewarding and enjoyable as an experience, and I can’t wait to see the boys play some of these songs live.