“Accident of Birth”, and the tour that followed it, were both a growing success, with the recruitment of former Maiden bandmate Adrian Smith adding to the attraction. Looking to follow up on the revitalisation of his prospects, the band consisting of Roy Z and Adrian Smith as guitarists and collaborators, along with Eddie Casillas on bass guitar and David Ingraham on drums, spent the first half of 1998 in the process of writing and recording the next album, to strike while the iron was hot.
The composition of the songs and the lyrics have been compared by some critics to be in line with a concept album, though they songs don’t tell a story from start to finish, and indeed Bruce himself has said that while each song has a link of sorts to each other, the album itself is not in a true concept piece. Bruce was quoted at the time in regards to what he was writing as such: “And it's all part of the whole alchemy thing. What were the alchemists trying to do? They were trying to achieve something that was virtually impossible, they spent their whole lives trying to do it, and all of them failed, or pretty damn near all of them failed. So, what does that feel like, and how does that work, and why keep carrying on. So that's the way the songs kind of work”
Bruce’s best comment following this was that if you want to delve into the lyrics, the tale he was telling was all there, but that it wasn’t necessary to do that to enjoy the album, because “you could just sit back there and let it hit you over the head like a sledgehammer, cause the album works, it's just a really heavy album” - and that is perhaps the most important part of this album. There is a depth if you are interested, but if you just want to listen to a great heavy album, then here it is.
The difference in the songs written for the “Skunkworks” album and the “Accident of Birth” album had been a massive change in direction, and that is magnified here. That template was refined and improved here on “The Chemical Wedding”. The major difference comes from the writing pair of Bruce and Roy. Roy Z appeared to have an innate knowledge of what the fans wanted from Bruce’s music, and between them had found the right place for that. And here on this album they push that a little harder. Bruce hadn’t wanted to head down this path after leaving Maiden, but he recognised that the stuff that Roy Z had produced for him had that magical quality.
This album incorporates all of that, flying in the face of what was happening in heavy metal at the time.
That opening magnificence of that heavy guitar intro to “King in Crimson” before the entrance of the opening vocals tracks of Bruce for the album is an assault on the senses from the very beginning. It is a cracking opening to the album, full of fire and brimstone from the outset. It leads perfectly into “The Chemical Wedding” which is almost the perfect single release song, if such a thing truly still existed by the time 1998 came around. Apparently “Killing Floor” was released as the single from the album, and there is definitely also a music video for “The Tower” out there, but this was the track that should have been, and ticks every box in regard to being it. Just over four minutes in length, the perfect single writing with ‘verse, chorus, verse, chorus solo chorus’, brilliant easy singalong lyrics. Then you have “The Tower”, melodically and powerfully one of the best songs Bruce has done in any sphere or medium. That fantastic start with just drums and bass, before the guitars crash in, and then the vocals. It has an epic wonderment about it that still sits within the frame of a five minute song. Truly terrific. “Killing Floor” then crashes in, co-written with Adrian, and nothing like what you expect when you listen to a Smith/Dickinson song. Hard core riffs, hard core vocals, mixed with the lulling of the vocals within the track. It’s a great song that even today still surprises me by the aggression in the guitars especially.
“Book of Thel” is the true epic of the album, pulling in all of the great moments of the songs before it and bringing the first half of the album to its conclusion in a wonderful array of emotional over-the-top vocals from the best in the business. It is still a brilliant track, that packs in everything that this band brings to the table.
“Gates of Urizen” allows Bruce to have his vocals soar without breaking stride, and then into “Jerusalem” which is another beautifully crafted and performed song, firstly with Bruce’s amazing vocals, before the awesome solo break with Adrian and Roy which lifts the song from amazing to pure awesome, topped off by the final choir of Bruce’s closing lyrics. It still sends shivers down the spine when you listen to it. “Trumpet of Jericho” builds on that and gives us another soaring vocal performance from Bruce. Then there is that opening riff of “Machine Men”, where even Adrian, who co-writes the song, shows that he doesn’t just have to offer the melodic guitar that he traditionally has written, these powerful riffs throughout the song have as much power as those composed by Roy elsewhere on the album. This is one of the best tracks on the album, and one I would have loved to have seen performed live. The album the concludes with the second big epic track of the album, “The Alchemist” when the five members of the band complete their tour de force in another uncompromising display of overt power and melody that reflects everything that has come before it.
The performances on this album are startling. The drumming of David Ingraham is tremendous. Some of his rolls and fills within the songs can get overlooked, but deeper inspection shows what a terrific performance he puts in, that really adds to the album and each song rather than acting as a Lars Ulrich timekeeper. Eddie Casillas is wonderful on bass, with his work on songs such as “The Tower” actually making the song much more than it would be without his playing. And the guitaring of both Roy Z and Adrian Smith is sensational, both fitting together perfectly and making their own styles gel together like they had been doing it together for years.
To top everything off on this album, Bruce’s vocals are divine, just superb in fact. He has been through a fait bit over the preceding five years, and all of it builds to the performance on this album. Everyone comes to this album for his voice, and he doesn’t disappoint here at all. Indeed, through everything he has done in his career, this is at the very top of that list.
About 24 and a half years ago, I hopped into the passenger seat of the car of one of my best mates, and he puta CD into the stereo and said “see if you can work out who this is”. That opening guitar intro to this album came thumping out of the speakers and I thought ‘wow... this sounds great... who the bloody hell is it?’. Move along, and then the vocals start. It sounds familiar but I’m still trying to work out... ‘hang on... is that Bruce Dickinson?!?’ And all he could do is laugh at me and say, “How good is it?” Well, the answer was that I wouldn’t know just how good it was for a few days, but my word I soon knew exactly how good it was!
What remains true today as it did 25 years ago when this album was released, is that “The Chemical Wedding” is a better album than every Iron Maiden album released post “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son”. There are no doubt several reasons why this is the case, and they probably bear consideration. This is a truer heavy metal album than any of those Maiden albums are. There aren’t melodic twin guitar sections, there aren’t songs where the bass guitarist writes and plays like a rhythm guitar, and for the most part, the songs don’t extend beyond five minutes. It isn’t a more progressive type of metal that Maiden had crept up to in the 1990’s and beyond and that was prevalent throughout Europe at this time, and it isn’t an industrial or alternative metal that other bands had transitioned to by this stage of the decade. This is a heavier guitar sound, one perhaps influenced by the time but retaining the traditional metal feel that Roy Z seems to have always been able to produce, whether writing, performing or producing. To be honest, it is a unique sound for that period because of all of this. It isn’t old 80’s type heavy metal, but neither is the newer form of the genre. Stylistically it retains the twin guitar, bass, drums format. But more than anything else, it has Bruce Dickinson back in the saddle, the real Bruce, where the vocals are everything, that are soaring without being the Air Raid Siren of the past, still magnificently sung over everything that the music produces. You could mount a reasonable argument that this album is Bruce’s finest moment in music, vocally, lyrically and musically. Pulling all of this together – the concept album that isn’t a concept album, an amazingly heavy album that defies the era with its melody anyway, and the intricacies of the music itself combining Adrian Smith’s magnificence and Roy Z’s majesty and the contributions of both David and Eddie – is an amazing feat, and something that has not been praised enough over the last 25 years.
You can only imagine that Steve Harris would have been watching and listening. Because a year later he and Bruce and Adrian had all been convinced that they should be reunited in Iron Maiden and get that old band back on the same path. It meant that this version of the Bruce Dickinson band dissolved as a result, and while it was great to have those two back in the big time band, it was a shame to see this project come to a halt. There was another album to come down the track, but that one was more just Roy and Bruce writing it by correspondence. Given the amazing quality of the previous two albums, what may another album by this band have brought forth? Idle speculation would suggest something amazing again. But perhaps they may have wanted to go in a different direction given Bruce doesn’t like to stick to the same path, and maybe it would not have been the same. Iron Maiden’s “Brave New World” album soon sorted all of that out, and they carried on into the sunset, hand in hand. Bruce still threatens to do another solo album. I don’t think anyone would be disappointed if he did.
This remains on my stereo more often than not, and would probably rank in my favourite 20 albums of all time were I to actually sit down and create that list. As an ‘old fashioned’ metal album in the late 1990’s it surpassed every other effort by every other band out there. That is praise enough.
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