Coming together again to compose the follow up, two events came together to help inspire the album cover and the name of the album. The band was in the process of creating a video game which eventually became “Ed Hunter”, starring Eddie the Head, which brought about the ‘virtual’ part of the album concept, with the advent of virtual reality. It was also the year for the football World Cup, and the band’s members were all football fans. As a part of the tour to promote this album, the band decided to organise football matches against teams in the cities they played in, also roping in celebrities along the way. And as such the name “Virtual XI” came into being. The 11 fitting nicely with the 11 members of a football team, and the fact that it would be Iron Maiden’s 11th studio album.
Even by this stage however, Iron Maiden was on a hiding to nothing. The loss of Smith and Dickinson, along with the changing music landscape, meant that holding onto fans who were both more interested in the music the band had released a decade ago as well being drawn into the new music being produced that was of a much different style of heavy metal than Iron Maiden would ever produce, meant it was difficult to retain the fans popularity that they had cultivated over the previous 20 years. Falling album sales, falling concert ticket sales... it was a time when you imagine that Iron Maiden as a band probably felt they needed to produce an album that was going to change that course and get them back in the spotlight for all the right reasons. It would be something easier said than achieved.
The album contains eight songs, and while they are not as dark and moody as those on the predeceasing album, there is still a less jaunty mood about them than on the albums from the 1980’s. This had been a growing and creeping part of the Iron Maiden sound since “No Prayer for the Dying”, and one that prevailed in all four albums released in the 1990’s. It could be argued that this came about because of the change in personnel and thus the change in the writers contributing to the songs of those albums. It was certainly a contributing factor to some of the fan base, who blamed Blaze’s contributions as the cause of this. But overall this isn’t the case. The main songwriter continued to be Steve Harris, who had his fingers over most aspects of those albums, so the direction the music was heading in most definitely had to have been orchestrated by him. This has always been my biggest concern over the albums of this period. I just don’t think the right people – or person – has been attributed with the way the songs are, and therefore where that disappointment, if it existed, should have been directed.
Despite all of this, the album opens with a classic. “Futureal” is a terrific song and atypical of most opening tracks on Iron Maiden albums. It gallops along, the guitars and drums are great, and Blaze gives it all with his vocals over the top. If Dickinson had recorded it, it would still be played in set lists to today. Unfortunately because it wasn’t, it has been confined to Blaze’s own shows ever since.
“The Angel and the Gambler” follows, and was also released as the first single from the album. Not only that, the single release was heavily edited to get it down to a length that radio stations would play, and had a video-game-like music video made for it as well. And I will never understand that decision. Because “The Angel and the Gambler” is a pretty average song. It’s almost ten minutes in length, it has too much keys and synth in the mix in places, and has too much of the same lyrics being repeated ad nauseum, something that haunts many of the songs on this album. There has never been anything much to write home about this track, and it remains one of the greatest mysteries of the band’s history as to how it got through meetings to actually appear on this album.
To me, there are two songs on this album that are like twins, and not because they sound like each, but because they seem to be on the same wavelength. “Lightning Strikes Twice” is the first of those songs, a nice twist of lyrics with dual meanings, and a great performance from Blaze where he really emotes the song terrifically, backed by the drums and guitars which also kick in at the right time to emphasise it. I still really love this song, which is only pulled back slightly by the repeating of the song title for the second half of the song. Great solos by both Dave and Jannick punctuate the back half of the song as well. Another great song under utilised in set lists since this tour.
The other twin is “When Two Worlds Collide”, which seems as though it may have been inspired by two films released in 1998 - “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact”, except that both of those films were released well after this album came out. But the scenario is the same, and again, like “Lightning Strikes Twice”, the important lyrics of the song are sung with great gusto and force by Blaze, with the other members also providing the appropriate backing. And, again, the over repeating of the chorus through to the end of the song just overplays itself, taking away a part of the impact the song makes.
The outstanding song on the album is “The Clansman”, arguably the best Maiden song of the 1990’s decade. Based around the events of the movie “Braveheart”, this Steve Harris gem perfectly gets the mood right throughout the whole track, and Blaze’s war cry of “Freeeeedoooom!” makes crowd participation when played live easy. It is the song that could have sold this album on its own if it had been marketed that way. Someone missed a trick there, without doubt.
The back half of the album is perhaps the most maligned, and not without some cause. “The Educated Fool” trundles along in second gear for much of the track, before the solo section brightens things up a little. Of all the tracks here, this is the one that sounds most like it came from the previous album in style. “Don’t Look to the Eyes of a Stranger” again tends to over repeat certain lines, and at over 8 minutes in length is again probably too long to retain interest all the way through. Then the closing track, “Como Estais Amigos”, whose loose translation is “how are you, friends”, is written as a tribute to the fallen on both sides of the Falklands War. I know these have proven lacklustre over the years, and when listening to the album it does prove to be the case. Up until the end of “When Two Worlds Collide” the album still holds its own, but the finale does eventually become something that feels a little less exciting.
Of all my friends from high school, who had been so enthralled by Iron Maiden as we grew up in the 1980’s, I was the only one who bought a copy of this album on its release. As far as I know, I am still the only one who owns a copy of this album. As it stands, I own two, both the original CD and the remastered double vinyl from a couple of years ago. And I was determined to like this album. I had enjoyed “The X Factor” and Blaze’s contributions, even though the tempo of the songs had come down markedly on that album from the earlier albums. And come on – when you first put on this album and you hear “Futureal” come through the speakers, you can’t be disappointed!
Am I biased? Perhaps somewhat. But that’s the thing. I love Iron Maiden, and I love Blaze Bayley’s solo material he has released since this album. But on repeated listens to the album, the truth of the matter came to pass. In the long run, this is only an average Iron Maiden album. And while that may make it better than most other bands good albums, it really doesn’t hold your interest all the way through. It does for me, because I have had it from the beginning, and I have listened to it a lot over the years, but for the casual listener, it is going to be a difficult album to get anything out of.
I am happy to nominate five of the eight songs as good songs, but most will only feel as though “Futureal” and “The Clansman” have any chance of being held in the same high regard as the great songs of the past.
In 1998, I listened to this album for a while, and then, with no chance of the band touring Australia or of this growing any fonder to me, it was returned to the shelves and only occasionally brought out for a relisten. And I probably didn’t really listen to it much again until five years later when Blaze Bayley released his first live album, which included both “Futureal” and “When Two Worlds Collide” on it, and I went back to “Virtual XI” to see if it had improved for me. And it had, it must be said, though that perhaps was on the back of the fact that Blaze’s first two solo albums “Ghost in the Machine” and “Tenth Dimension” were so good, and I just wanted to hear his stuff with Maiden again. Since that time, I have had the album on sporadically as I work through the Maiden back catalogue along the way over the years, and I enjoy it every time I put it on. No, it isn’t one of their great albums. And Blaze is often held up as the cause. But a couple of things disprove this point. The first is that Steve Harris wrote the songs as well as co-producing the album, and they were arranged the way he wanted them. It isn’t Blaze’s vocals to blame on the studio album. The second is that Blaze’s first two solo albums released after he agreed to leave Iron Maiden in order for Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith to return, are both better than this album. And he wrote all of those.
In the long run, the fans, and probably the band itself, wanted and needed Bruce and Adrian to be back in order for it to be felt as though it was really ‘Iron Maiden’. And this would have been a major reason why it didn’t sell as well, simply because they weren’t there. Their return allowed the next album “Brave New World” to be a monster, and kickstarted Maiden’s return to the top of the heavy metal tree. For “Virtual XI” though, at least it can still hang its hat on one of the band’s best songs of the past 30 years.
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