Heavy metal legends Iron Maiden bring forth their 14th studio album “A Matter of Life and Death.” After two successful albums with Bruce Dickinson back on vocal duties, some believe that it’s time for the band to start updating there now dated formulaic brand of heavy metal. Granted, the band plays every song perfectly, with an impressive ability to create different moods and epic choruses. But the problems lies with the fact that the songs don’t differ to much, and so the listener feels as if the band ran out of ideas and simply rewrote the same song ten times. Most of the songs of this album start of with a low bass line, which truthfully sound too much like mid-ninety’s Iron Maiden with the mediocre Blaze Bayley on vocals.

Album opener “Different World” is a classic Maiden song, with great melodies and a catchy chorus, but nothing that the band hasn’t done before. “These Colours Don’t Run” is the second track of the album and it’s merely a rehash of the first track, and it represents a very unusual aspect of Iron Maiden: fillers; this song doesn’t add anything to the album. It also shows the pattern that the album follows as it’s not very different from the rest of the songs. With the third track “Brighter Than a Thousand Suns” one can finally listen to the direction the band should’ve taken in the first place. The song starts with the same bass line, but this time it’s followed by a very crunchy guitar riff, definitely one of Maiden’s heaviest moments ever and also has some impressive drumming by Nicko McBrain. The song goes on close to nine minutes in length which does not affect this particular track, but it does drag down the rest of the album. Six out of the ten songs from “A Matter of Life and Death” are over seven minutes in length; therefore it’s a pretty dull album, as the songs seem to go on forever before they take off. After the juggernaut of “Brighter Than a Thousand Suns” the album becomes very inconsistent. Tracks like “The Longest Day,” “The Pilgrim” and “Out of the Shadows” are very lackluster; the inconsistency comes because although these are definitely not the best songs the band has written there are also plenty of great cuts that can be found here. “Lord of Light,” “For the Greater Good of God” and “The Legacy” are classic Maiden, with great hooks and mind-blowing guitar solos. The strongest point of the album is “The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg,” which was released as the album’s first single. The song is played at mid-tempo, with an incredible riff that has all three guitarists bringing their best chops to the table. Steve Harris plays his trademark bass sound, which is usually on top of the guitar sound and Nicko McBrain’s tight grooves.

Even though “A Matter of Life and Death” is not by any means better than anything the band has released in the past (except maybe the two releases from the Bayley era), it will most likely please the ever loyal Iron Maiden fan base. There are songs on this album that are solid rockers, but the continuous use of the same elements on other tracks keeps the album from becoming truly great. Hopefully the future will have something much better in store for one of metal’s premier acts.