The subject of war has always been fertile ground for metal bands and Maiden themselves are no stranger to this, with many of their most well known tracks taking inspiration from historical events such as the Crimean War (‘The Trooper’), World War II (‘Where Eagles Dare’, ‘Aces High’) and the cold war (‘2 Minutes To Midnight’) but with ‘A Matter Of Life And Death’ the band would focus on these themes exclusively, resulting in an album that eschews the flag waving bombastic bluster of warfare and instead hones in on the grim human cost of war and the futility of combative violence itself.

A fertile writing period for the band, ‘A Matter Of Life And Death’ was recorded quickly too, with many of the first unmastered takes making the final cut. Indeed, the decision to not master the album was something the band felt aligned with the organic nature of the writing and recording process, an approach befitting the album’s subject matter. But whilst the production may have been a bit more back to basics in approach, the songwriting certainly wasn’t. It’s a long album (just over 70 minutes) but none of the tracks outstay their welcome, every song feels well developed, thought out and assembled. Every band member is locked in too, with Dickinson in particular laying down some of the most impassioned vocals of his career, particular on the balladic ‘Out Of The Shadows’, anthemic ‘These Colours Don’t Run’ and hard rocking epic ‘The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg’. In the album’s heavier passages, the guitars feel crunchy and thick too, 

With the exception of the short and sweet singalong opener ‘Different World’, this is an album entirely comprised of songs ranging from five to nine minutes long, tracks that build slowly and have a much more of a progressive feel to them. The longer, drawn out nature of these compositions only adds to the heavy nature of the album’s themes, with some of the tracks feeling almost claustrophobic in their gloom. ‘The Longest Day’ (named after the 1962 John Wayne WWII epic) paints an understandably bleak picture of the Normandy landings, as Dickinson, in the song’s menacing verses laments “The enemy coast dawning grey with scud/These wretched souls, puking, shaking fear/To take a bullet for who sent them here”. This darkness prevails on the disarmingly anthemic ‘For The Greater Good Of God’, a song which questions religions’ role in war, as Dickinson’s soldier character pleads “Tell me now what life is/Tell me now what love is”. The bleak tone is carried throughout the entire album, right until the final lines of epic closer ‘The Legacy’ where the track’s narrator, speaking of the orchestrators of war, concedes “Do you think that they care? They benefit from death and pain and despair”. Though not a concept album,’ A Matter Of Life And Death’ is as close as the band have ever come to making one, so interlinked are the tracks and subject matter. The album’s artwork too is similarly bleak, with the familiar face of Eddie facing the viewer, astride a tank, gun aloft as an army of skeleton soldiers stagger towards us amongst a burnt, war torn, leaden skied landscape.

In a recent interview, Nikko McBrain proclaimed ‘A Matter Of Life And Death’ to be his all time favourite Iron Maiden album (his drumming absolute shines throughout, bolstered by that unfussy production) and Bruce Dickinson has spoken nothing but fondly of it through the years. They chose to play it live in its entirety for a reason – these are songs the band believe in and are proud of. With fans, it still often remains somewhat of a polarising album, with its detractors finding the overall mood of the album too dour for their tastes especially in comparison to Maiden’s more tonally varied albums from the 1980s. What is without doubt however is that ‘A Matter Of Life And Death’ is a singular and standout album in an already teeming-with-quality back catalogue filled to the brim with classics. It’s the Iron Maiden album with the clearest vision and execution.

This is Maiden unfiltered, dark and focussed, a band nearly three decades into their career at the absolute peak of their songwriting powers. 

ADAM FIRTH

Among those affected were the parents of Alexisonfire, and their suffering and fear became distilled into their 2006 album, ‘Crisis’. It was a turning point in the Alexis sound; any whimsy or light-heartedness is replaced with brooding anxiety, and also the moment that their career accelerated into the stratosphere. ‘Crisis’ debuted at number one in the Canadian charts and was certified platinum a year later. Two decades later, when it was played in London, the show at Wembley Arena sold out months in advance. ‘Crisis’ became the definitive Alexisonfire album from the second it came out. 

“Alright! This is from our hearts!” The first line of ‘Drunks, Lovers, Sinners, Saints’ feels like a declaration, and a chorus leading with “are you even listening?” is a dare. That’s what makes ‘Crisis’ so great; it’s so provocative without ever striking an individual. The entire world outside of their bubble is what needs to be stirred into action, or dragged kicking and screaming into their universe. Yet somehow their bubble encompasses all of us and everywhere, and perhaps that’s what’s made ‘Crisis’ such a universal success. They’ve taken their central experience and made it ours, to understand those trapped by the Blizzard and to hold it close to our own lives. When Dallas Green screams “The streets are in distress / The sun suffocates behind darkened skies” on ‘This Could Be Anywhere In The World’, is he talking about the small towns choked by snow in 1977, a war zone in the Middle East, or a derelict council estate in South London? It could be all of them, or none of them, or whatever we want to it to mean in our experiences. 

When they tell a story, they do it with magnificent subtlety. “A man sits at his desk one year from retirement / And he’s up for review, not quite sure what to do / Each passing year the workload grows,” howls George Pettitt on ‘Boiled Frogs’. Ostensibly he’s retelling a story of his father’s dispute with a former boss, but with each micro-narrative they pour universal messages. Each taut little song is it’s own set of images, and that has to be the biggest turning point represented in ‘Crisis’. This was the point where they told their own stories rather than relying on second hand experiences. Just compare the lyrics to the title track to 2004’s ‘That Girl Possessed’  – who cares about The Exorcist when their own experiences hold the same drama within them? It’s the everyday darkness floating throughout this record which makes it hypnotic. A couple fighting over death on the hollow ‘You Burn First’, the raw vitriol of the betrayed that sweeps through ‘Keep It On Wax’, the domestic desperation of the slow-burning ‘Rough Hands’; all of these are such small personal incidents, yet when they’re expanded out into song, they’re transformed into all-consuming bleakness which lingers around you.

In true Alexisonfire style, the band didn’t let the explosion of ‘Crisis’ fade into smoke. As soon as it was out, they toured on and off for a year, and their tour mates started to build on what they heard of the new Alexis. Cancer Bats’ 2008 ‘Hail Destroyer’ record was hugely influenced by ‘Crisis’, as was hometown neighbours Silverstein’s ‘Arrivals & Departures’ in 2007. Even as late as 2015, 36 Crazyfists credited ‘Crisis’ as being a big influence on ‘Time And Trauma’. That’s another wonderful aspect of ‘Crisis’; it lingers through the ages, from a spark in the seventies through to an exploration of generational experiences in 2006, to a very frustrated writer in the early 2010s who would use this record (along with Motörhead’s Greatest Hits, Linkin Park’s ‘Hybrid Theory’, and the gangster-larping magnum opus that is ‘Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes’ by Social Distortion) to scream out her employment misery at any opportune moment. While my apologies go to anyone who heard me singing ‘To A Friend’ at a bus stop in the suburbs after a bad day, I can’t be ashamed for feeling a power in the way that Alexisonfire turned trauma and terror into a reclamation of your own destiny.

‘Crisis’ is a triumph which stands strong after twenty years, and will continue to be the pinnacle of perseverance music for decades to come. 

KATE ALLVEY

Let’s not think about Reel Big Fish as they are now; Aaron Barrett and a rotating cast of pals covering Phil Collins and self-releasing, when they haven’t loaned their brass section to Ice Nine Kills that is. Let’s remember them in the nineties, when they popped up in the movie ‘Baseketball’, with perfect hair and hyperactive dance moves, in that brief, golden few years when ska and ska-punk ruled the charts. It was the era when I, as a teenager, dated the male equivalent of a punk Manic Pixie Dream Girl. We listened to Flogging Molly in his parents’ garden, debated which was the best Bad Religion song endlessly, and wondered if we could write Matt Freeman a letter to ask if he could teach us the bassline to ‘Maxwell Murder’. While that relationship hit the dust when I went to university (and refused to give up bacon sandwiches for him), ‘Turn The Radio Off’ will always hold that kind of idyllic, bright energy of a time when life was more straightforward and skanking at the Cartoon in Croydon at the All-Ages night was the solution to all your problems. 

Part of what makes ‘Turn The Radio Off’ so great is that if it came out now, it’d be slated. Putting a huge banger next to three minutes of noodling around, next to a song which feels weirdly personal about getting dumped, next to a mini Rock Opera (or should that be ska opera?), should be the recipe for a shiny brass disaster. But that’s the point; this is the sound of freedom, of a band throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. ’S.R.’ got reworked into a multi-genre medley at live shows, and ‘Sell Out’ has officially acquired Ska Icon status. The song that’s stuck around the most, however, and assumed the two-tone mantle of the song that represents Reel Big Fish, has to be ‘Beer’. It feels like the sequel to The Offspring’s ‘Self Esteem’; our jaded protagonist has given up on the girl he’s been making dessert for and has decided to find the solution to his crush at the bottom of a pint glass. From the taut, dark intro through to the self-destructive, stripped back bridge and the disturbingly upbeat ‘woo-hoo-hoo’, this is the blueprint for the sugar-coated misery which is the trademark of this era of Ska-punk. The worst part is how relatable it is. Sometimes, to paraphrase ‘How I Met Your Mother’, you just need to be a ‘Woo Girl’, and this song captures that rollercoaster of needing to party out your self-loathing for just a few minutes. ‘Sell Out’ does this too, and it does it so incredibly well. As if someone’s only two paths in life were working fast food or signing a major label deal…but that doesn’t matter. That’s how it would have felt in that moment to someone considering making a life changing career decision, and these very specific young adult experiences are what Reel Big Fish bring to life musically. 

Ska-Punk historians will probably agree that 2002’s ‘Cheer Up!’ is a far better album, spawning the very petty ‘Ban The Tube Top’ and arguably a better loser anthem in the form of ‘Where Have You Been?’, but that came when as one last magnificent Ska swan song, just as the boom was finishing. ‘Turn The Radio Off’ was still experimental, and feels like a band grappling with suddenly being flavour of the moment. Each song is an individual, and there’s no reliance on eighties covers to jazz up their set. We feel like Reel Big Fish are our sarcastic, sometimes inappropriate, but charismatic friends by the end of ‘Turn The Radio Off’… maybe friends we’ve lost touch with, or friends we should call more often, but friends all the same, who were there with us in our formative years and still have a whole lot to offer. 

KATE ALLVEY