Songs to blow stuff up to

Band: Iron Maiden
Song: Moonchild (Listen)
Album: Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988) (Buy)

Moonchild is the first song off of one my of favourite band’s favourite albums. It also happens to be one of my favourite songs on there too. Unfortunately, I must admit that I’ve neglected the album as a whole until recently; it has simply been pushed to the back of my mind by other records I’m discovering. However, it has in the past week been launched back to the front of my mind thanks a small game called Beat Hazard. In a brief sentence, you blow shit up to the beat and rhythm of a song of your own choosing. I'm completely and shamelessly addicted to it. Anyway, it just so happens that Moonchild works absolutely brilliantly in it, giving me a decent enough reason to talk about an Iron Maiden song.

To talk about the song though, one must first talk about the album. Being a concept album, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son could have potentially been a sign of the band’s increasing self-importance and self-indulgence. The central story follows the traditional occult tale of a seventh son of a seventh son (surprise, surprise), who is blessed and cursed with a number of powers that place him at the centre of a struggle between good and evil. Not that you’d know this from listening to the album, as to its strength it largely plays down the story, instead allowing relatively subtle references to it to instead highlight larger themes. This more often that not prevents the album from being bogged down, as many concept albums are, with what is essentially a fantasy story. That said, the lyricists Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith can’t help but sometimes lapse into what for some may be confusing and bizarre lyrical content, a factor that makes or breaks the album depending on the listener. By and large though, the album avoids these concept album stereotypes, instead being one of the greatest albums ever made (in my humble opinion). There are plenty of classic songs here that stand just as strong on their own as they do as part of the album, with clever lyrics and a lot of the time even greater music, perhaps the best Maiden have ever produced.

But I digress. Moonchild is largely representative of the album as a whole, and as such it’s only potential weakness in my eyes is its lyrics, something that I love but that would hold me back from sharing the song with certain people. Told from the point of view of Lucifer (you can see we’re off to a good start), the lyrics are at best a mystical set of prophecies and threats delivered to the protagonists of the story, setting the scene for the rest of the album. They are at worst the insane ramblings of Satan. Take them as you will. You will be more than able to ignore them due to a Bruce Dickinson who was at the height of his vocal talent.

What makes the song for me isn’t the content, however, but the music. With a mastering of the keyboard-layered style they toyed around with on their previous album, the song features some great rhythm work, subtle during the verses and then rising with a great chorus riff. Top that with great singing and solos, as well as one of the best build ups to a song I've ever heard, and you’ve got a song that I can’t stop blowing spaceships up to.

Songs to reminisce to

Artist: volcano!
Song: Frozen In Escape (Spotify)
Album: Beautiful Seizure (Buy)

I remember the first time I heard volcano! a few years back. I was at a friends house on a summer afternoon listening to music on his computer between jamming and playing playstation, when his brother put on Apple or a Gun. It didnt hit me immediately, but something stuck with me, to the point I looked them up a few months later and bought their first album, Beautiful Seizure. I consider myself a relatively fickle person when it comes to music, and I can say that this is among only a handful of albums I've listened to fairly consitently since getting it, and I highly recommend you do the same. It's an album that definitely has its more immediate songs (Apple or a Gun, Easy Does It, Fire Fire) that I could all enthuse about for ages, but there were always tracks that eluded me until much recently. One of these was Frozen In Escape.

I'm not sure if it was something about me being much younger that lead to me never giving this song a proper chance, either skipping it on listens through the album or idly having it on in the background, but I know now that I was a fool. Maybe it was how slight it is, constituting only of Aaron With's piercing vocal and sparse guitar strums for the majority of the first half of the song. Maybe it was that it doesn't go far for the first 2/3rds of the song, relying on understatement to emphasise With's verses of longing for the past. I think I always appreciated the slightly chaotic ending to an extent, but it's not even half as affecting without 'getting' what precedes.

There's something about With's repeated croons of 'It's better there' that gets to me now where it didn't before. There's something affecting about that first guitar stab in the chorus and the way volcano! as a band seemingly effortlessly use the juxtaposition of loud and quiet to draw you so completely into a mood. It all makes me genuinely feel something now that I was stupidly oblivious to before. I'm not sure what that exact reason may have been, but I know now that my life would be much poorer without the music of volcano! and I urge you to give them the time and patience to become part of yours.