Hot Take 'em All: Iron Maiden's 'Senjutsu'
Reacting to heavy metal's event releases
Welcome to Hot Take ‘em All, a new Plague Rages series that neither rips off The Ringer’s Exit Surveys nor invalidates my very serious opinions on hot take opinions. In this edition of HTEA, Wolf Rambatz and Steve Dave tackle Senjutsu, Iron Maiden’s 17th full-length released on September 3 via Parlophone.
Illustrations by Mark Wilkinson. Calligraphy by Ruth Rowland. 3D art by Michael Knowland. Art direction and design by Stuart Crouch.
What is your hastily written capsule review for Senjutsu?
Steve Dave: More memorable, better performed, and features a mostly sharper production than its predecessor, but Senjutsu still suffers from the bloat and excess that dogs latter day Iron Maiden.
Wolf Rambatz: Old band sounds old. Senjutsu has moments, but it’s too long by at least 40 maddeningly midpaced minutes and what’s good sounds like a copy of a copy, similar to how memes that are screenshotted over and over again become distorted and weirdly cropped. Senjutsu Son of a S3njutsuuuuuu sun. While the odd solo singes, the rhythm section sounds washed on disc one, making it more and more apparent that Maiden lives and dies by how interested Steve Harris and Nicko McBrain are in pushing their creative limits. Harris at least wakes up for the final three tracks, but each of those tracks crawl past 10 minutes for no real reason other than no one told the sextet to stop. The feedback loop is a foie gras gavage tube. And, really, that’s the story of Senjutsu. 2021 Maiden has no gas pedal and, worse, no self-restraint to rein in its more indulgent tendencies. My kingdom for a collaborative producer willing to say “no.”
What is Senjutsu’s best moment?
SD: The choruses in “The Time Machine” are the culmination of the cinematic vision that Steve Harris is shooting for in seemingly every song on this album. The acoustic guitars are a huge success here too.
WR: “The Parchment” is Maiden ripping off “Stargazer.” It works. It has the best riffs and the outro is the only time I didn’t mind the band exploring the extra space. (Granted, it’s like taking a steam engine through flyover territory to get there, but I’m trying to be nice. Nearly all of these songs feel like when a referee holds up the board to announce stoppage time and it’s like, “Holy god, six more minutes?”) In a setlist of better songs, I could still see a spirted take of “The Parchment” holding its own. Hilariously, I don’t love its solos, which are Senjutsu’s strongest element overall, but pound for pound, and at an album-long 12:40 it has a lot of pounds, “The Parchment” is the gem.
A few other moments of merit: As stated, the solos are mostly good to great throughout. “Days of Future Past” earns a nod for being the peppiest track even though it’s an arthritic tortoise compared to Maiden’s glory days. (Again, I shouldn’t be writing this in the “best” section, but, let’s be real: If you listen to Senjutsu at 1.25x speed, it sure doesn’t hurt.) “Death of the Celts” has some pleasing tri-guitar interplay and Harris’s better basslines. Once “The Time Machine” gets going, Bruce Dickinson lets loose and sounds great. “The Writing on the Wall,” a song I deemed monotone-voice “fine” upon release, is actually perfectly cromulent in context, though the video bugs me even more now. Fan service isn’t art, it’s business, and the video is mostly in the business of announcing a forthcoming merch explosion.
What is its worst?
SD: The intro to “The Time Machine” almost entirely plagiarizes the intro to one of Maiden’s more recent tunes, “The Talisman.” Except Bruce now sounds like a drunk witch, which is not a compliment. It’s the most offensive proof of Maiden running out of ideas.
WR: “Stratego” is bad. It feels much longer than its five minutes, a hell of a thing to write about Senjutsu’s second-shortest track, especially since it follows an eight-minute nothingburger of an album opener that, itself, is like lining up to Le Mans on a riding lawn mower. Anyway, “Stratego” isn’t helped by having the album’s worst mix and Bruce’s worst vocal performance. Granted, Bruce has endured a hell of a lot to make this album and some vocal cord degradation is to be expected. But, he sounds fine and even inspiringly good on almost every other song. It’s almost like “Stratego” came from a completely different session. Maybe Parlophone heard an early cut of Senjutsu and said, “Yikes, this needs a real single, guys.” But that’s just the thing! “Stratego” is not a good single! It’s baffling why Maiden released it as the second stream prior to Senjutsu’s release unless that was a calculated move to make the rest of Senjutsu sound better. As someone who intentionally flunked math to get an easier high school schedule, I appreciate the non-hustle. Whatever. All in all, “Stratego” is like a wedding band trying to work through “Futureal” or something. A total whiff.
It’s not the worst thing about Senjutsu, though! No, sir. I gotta give that dishonor to the hushed, moody intros which pop up on nearly every song. God, why? All of them are extremely musical theatre, and theatre-kid Maiden is, without a doubt, the band’s worst impulse. Each epic’s opening minute(s) would make even the most deranged dungeon synth dork check their watch. “Lost In a Lost World”’s intro, which sure ain’t no “Stranger in a Strange Land,” is glued-to-the-toilet-seat Roger Waters getting punished by norovirus. “The Time Machine”’s intro has Andrew Lloyd Webber stage-clearer vibes. I mean, there’s no reason why “Hell on Earth” needs two fucking minutes of a jetlagged Wishbone Ash trying to widdle away an incessant earworm! None of these songs need this shit! Just start the fucking song!
Stat Blast: Do you know that if you suck out every unnecessary overture, and I’m not even counting “Darkest Hour,” it takes Senjutsu’s monstrous total runtime of 81:53 down to 72:53? That’s not good, but that version of the album might actually be a cohesive album!
How does Senjutsu measure up against the rest of Iron Maiden’s discography?
SD: It likely slots into a lower-middle in its discography. Better than its worst outings including the last two albums, but it does not come close to any of Maiden’s ‘80s records or even the first two reunion-era efforts.
WR: It doesn’t sniff any of the ‘80s classics I can assure you of that, and you’re insane if you’re ranking Senjutsu anywhere near them a week after release. Guys, you can think something is eh. It doesn’t have to be best ever or worst ever out of the gate. Goddamnit, do I hate the internet and stan culture.
The problem with ranking Senjutsu is that, while Maiden’s many eras probably don’t sound that different to someone unfamiliar with its catalog, each individual decade of its existence is self-contained. The ‘80s are its own thing, the ‘90s are its own thing, etc. Since Senjutsu was recorded in 2019, I think it’s only fair to measure it against The Final Frontier and The Book of Souls, aka Iron Decayeden. Final Frontier is a snoozer, although, as Steve Dave said on Episode #4 of the pod, “The Talisman,” after its own interminable intro, is pretty dope. The Book of Souls is an album that I remember more about where I was when I first listened to it — walking around inside of a fish hatchery, it was cool — than the album itself, but I do remember it having prominent hooks and a brighter/tighter Bruce performance. Book of Souls > Senjutsu > Final Frontier.
How does Senjutsu measure up against the other "event" releases this year?
SD: Senjutsu seems to fall into a similar trap that other event releases did this year: while they don’t necessarily tarnish the respective discographies, they don't add much to them either. They’re enjoyable for a listen, but one can’t be bothered to spin them again.
WR: Because I am music critic scum, I’ve heard Carcass’s Torn Arteries already. We’ll get into it in a future HTEA, but I can say that, while it’s boring, it’s not this boring and only has one song that needs chronosuction instead of *checks notes* all of them.
I should rank At the Gates’s The Nightmare of Being higher than Senjutsu because it’s the record that At the Gates needed to make at this stage of its career. For an extreme metal mainstream-baiting unit-pusher, it reunites old-guy ATG with its pre-Slaughter past as over-ambitious youngsters. For the first time in a long time, I can see a path for ATG that’s not the festival nostalgia circuit. That’s something. That said, the orchestral interludes are the kind of background nothing music that would score Champions League highlights. Being does have more successful feints at expansion beyond the boarders of melodeath, such as subtle motorik structures, but I wouldn’t call any of it, like, brave; it’s not Oranssi Pazuzu, a band that has been trying like hell to shed its aboveground listeners lately. It’s experimentalism with an extremely low ceiling. Also, Tomas Lindberg’s voice, like Bruce’s, is blown out, but it’s much more of a detriment to ATG’s overall aesthetic.
So: Carcass > Iron Maiden > At the Gates, although I should preface that none of them are good. If we’re going there, Cannibal Corpse’s Violence Unimagined steamrolls all of them. I’ll happily turn in my metal badge and love gun to write that Helloween’s “Skyfall” dunks all over them, too. Deafheaven is not metal and sucks.
Final thoughts?
SD: My hope is that Senjutsu is a more transitional album, the way Somewhere in Time was in 1986. The band seems more interested in making movie-score metal, but are attempting to get there by jamming in a room rather than thinking things out a bit more. Maiden has proved that style can be done well with select songs in the last couple decades, and the synths and acoustic guitars do really help add to the atmosphere, but Senjutsu’s songs are just not up to spec.
WR: Lemme write that, while it may read like I’m being overly harsh, it’s because I love Iron Maiden and I think it’s fair to push the band to be better because it can be so much better. Somewhere in Time is woven into my DNA. I had a pair of Killers Vans that I used to wear to work defying the biz-caz dress code, suck it, HR. I’ll defend Dance of Death’s better moments to either my next dance and/or death. My disappointment, then, emanates from that deep wound. Maybe I’ll reappraise Senjutsu when the sting wears off. Probably won’t judging by my Books of Souls amnesia, but I’ll at least try again if a friend asks me nicely. I am that kind of Maiden sucker.
In a previous version of this piece, I wrote inelegantly about how irritated I was with the hyperbolic fan response, how the stans came out to stan in extremely dumbfounding, yet totally predictable stan ways. As a reaction to that, I also think a number of zines, websites, and blogs punted on Senjutsu’s review because they didn’t want to get Beyhived into oblivion. (The site AOTY has Senjutsu with a critic score of 80 and a user score of 60. Hm.) This isn’t to say those stans are dishonest. By all means, be unreasonably enthusiastic about what you like. This is metal, after all. This is what we do. But it felt like there was a performative aspect to the rapturous ovation that didn’t match the general perception of Senjutsu held by the non-insane. To wit, it currently holds a 3.14 rating on RateYourMusic, making it the second-worst Maiden album of this century, a smidge above The Final Frontier. It’s better than the Iron Blazen ‘90s, because of course. It’s better than 1990’s No Prayer for the Dying, because it’s not released within spitting distance of classics. But, otherwise, Senjutsu is just a meh album that will probably be remembered for its heavy production more than anything else. It’s not BEST ALBUM EVAH, it’s not a disaster. It just sort of is. That feels right.
So, yeah, I don’t want to relitigate all of this again. I did it badly the first time and it’s not like I’m ready to line up for my Pulitzer now. Instead, my final note is that I’m just…shocked that Iron Maiden, a band that is 46 years old, has utilized the internet so well. The build up to Senjutsu was a masterstroke of J.J. Abrams-style winks, nods, and Easter eggs. (I don’t particularly like that stuff because I’m a grumpy asshole, as you can no doubt intuit.) Maiden then influencerized its YouTube to perfect viral effect, curating a comment section on each Senjutsu song that was full of ravenous fans begging for attention. And, much like how each track is given a different flag to wave in those YouTube videos, each track is destined to be sucked out into Spotify playlists. That’s the thing that really bugs me about Senjutsu. This doesn’t feel like an album, more like the MCU equivalent of classic Iron Maiden. And maybe that’s the point. Each Mr. Creosote song with its “wafer-thin” intro is an album unto itself, a mini-musical that’s meant to body all of the other songs sequenced around it. Mixed in with various artists, these songs scream “WE’RE IRON MAIDEN!” in the most perfunctory way, doing little more than acting as big-ass signposts directing the uninitiated back to Maiden. And that’s cool, I guess. There are worse ways to get into Iron Maiden. But, when all of those songs are collected onto an album, each of them screaming “WE’RE IRON MAIDEN” at each other in the most maximalist ways possible, all I can think is, Yeah, you sure used to be.
This a re-post of a piece that has been heavily edited since it was first published.
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