- Country: UK
- Style: Heavy metal / Progressive metal
- Label: Parlophone / BMG
- Release date: 3 September 2021
Senjutsu is Iron Maiden’s 17th studio album, a double album running over 81 minutes, recorded at Guillaume Tell Studios in Paris in early 2019 with Kevin Shirley producing alongside Steve Harris. Nobody expected brevity, and nobody gets it.
The opening title track stomps along at a slow, war-drum pace that is unusual for them, and it works. “Stratego” is the classic gallop, short and sharp, while “The Writing On The Wall” brings a bluesy, almost southern-rock swagger from Adrian Smith and Bruce Dickinson that took a lot of fans by surprise. Smith and Dickinson also wrote “Darkest Hour”, a proper slow-burning ballad where Dickinson sounds tremendous.
Then comes the Harris stretch. The final three songs, “Death Of The Celts”, “The Parchment” and “Hell On Earth”, are his alone and add up to over half an hour. The quiet intro, the build, the twin-guitar theme, the long instrumental middle… if you know Maiden you know the formula, and it does drag in places. But “Hell On Earth” earns every one of its eleven minutes, and it is the closer this band needed. They still sound like Iron Maiden, only bigger.
Best tracks:
Senjutsu
Stratego
The Writing On The Wall
Darkest Hour
Hell On Earth
Author’s rating: 8.8/10
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