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Bruce! What happened? All these years,
first with "Samson" (back when you were "Bruce
Bruce"), then "Iron Maiden," where you rocked
like crazy, and then bang! Here comes "Tattooed Millionaire"
and you got soft! Incredible. Truth is stranger than fiction.
For some reason that I don't remember,
I missed Bruce's second album. Which is not a bad thing after
all, since "Chemical Wedding" sounds almost like "Tattooed
Millionaire." I am not going to say it sucks, or that it's
bad, because it's neither. It's just the same.
"Bruce Dickinson" is blessed
with one of the greatest voices in hard rock history. His voice
still packs a punch, and makes other heavy metal wannabes sound
like sissies. Better yet, he has a REAL heavy metal voice, not
like those Mickey Mouse death and speed metal creeps that call
themselves singers. No way.
What happened to Bruce is that he does
not want to spend the rest of his life as "that guy that
was in Iron Maiden" (Paul DiAnno, where are you when we
need you?). He tries very hard to create a distinctive sound,
which makes it even harder for all of us that grew up listening
to "Iron Maiden." Heck, I didn't even know he was in
"Samson" until I found a few old CDs on a discount
table at Camelot's. The name sounded really familiar, plus they
were only a buck apiece. When I got home, one of the songs sounded
too much like the "Ides of March" from "Iron Maiden's"
"Killers" (1981). Later I found another "Samson"
CD with a label that said "featuring Bruce Dickinson from
Iron Maiden." Well, that settled it.
Bruce's current style is a smoother version
of what he did in "Samson," tuned up a little bit for
the '90s. It really sounds like a semi-commercial "Iron
Maiden," without the signature base guitar of Steve Harris.
The rest sounds just the same.
Like I said above, I cannot follow the
progression, if there was any, from "Tattooed Millionaire"
to "Chemical Wedding," at least not until I catch up
with whatever he recorded in-between. Still, I recommend this
CD to all the "Iron Maiden" fans out there that still
miss Bruce Dickinson's powerful voice. This CD will also appeal
to fans of good, old style heavy metal and hard rock, which is
creeping little by little into the endangered species list of
music. |
