Gelap Pekat

The first track-by-track review of "The Final Frontier", the new album from British heavy metal legends IRON MAIDEN, has been posted on the Radio Metal web site.

IRON MAIDEN's 15th studio LP, "The Final Frontier", will be released in North America on August 17 (one day earlier internationally) via Universal Music Enterprises (UMe).

The band reunited with long-time MAIDEN producer Kevin "Caveman" Shirley in early 2010 at Compass Point Studios, Nassau to record the album and then moved to The Cave Studios in Malibu, California to finish the recording and do the mixing. Compass Point Studio is very familiar to the band, it was where they recorded the "Piece Of Mind" (1983), "Powerslave" (1984) and "Somewhere In Time" (1986) albums.

"The Final Frontier" features artwork illustrated by Melvyn Grant.

The track listing for the CD is as follows (total running time 76:35):

01. Satellite 15....The Final Frontier (Smith/Harris) (8:40)
02. El Dorado (Smith/Harris/Dickinson) (6:49)
03. Mother Of Mercy (Smith/Harris) (5:20)
04. Coming Home (Smith/Harris/Dickinson) (5:52)
05. The Alchemist (Gers/Harris/Dickinson) (4:29)
06. Isle Of Avalon (Smith/Harris) (9:06)
07. Starblind (Smith/Harris/Dickinson) (7:48)
08. The Talisman (Gers/Harris) (9:03)
09. The Man Who Would Be King (Murray/Harris) (8:28)
10. When The Wild Wind Blows (Harris) (10:59)

IRON MAIDEN guitarist Dave Murray recently told Billboard.com about "The Final Frontier", "We breezed through the album, really. We actually finished it in six weeks. We were getting down a track a day — all playing together as a band, Bruce (Dickinson) singing, all in the same room, so there's a very live-in-the-studio feel to it. Once we finished a track we'd jump straight into doing some extra guitar bits. It was very quick for us."

Murray said the 10-track set mixes "straight-ahead, uptempo rock songs with good grooves with some other tracks that are kind of longer and more complex." The album closer, "When the Wild Wind Blows", is an 11-minute track that's one of the longest songs IRON MAIDEN has ever recorded. "The rhythm's a little bit different from what we've done before, and there's lots of melodies," Murray said. "It's a big song. We learned it in sections just because it was such a complex arrangement, but it sounds quite natural (on the record)."