#songoftheday / REVIEW: Iron Maiden – “Speed Of Light”

“Humanity won’t save us / At the speed of light,” sings Iron Maiden’s “Speed of Light,” the first single from their forthcoming album, The Book Of Souls, which is due out on September 4th.  It’s one of the band’s best singles in years and manages to both kick ass and be incredibly catchy at the same time.  Maiden used to give fans this mix twenty plus years ago with singles like “Wasted Years,” “Can I Play With Madness,” “2 Minutes To Midnight,” “Holy Smoke, etc,” but during recent years their songs have been less about being infectious and more about just plain being heavy.  Of course, even an un-infectious Maiden is ten times the band that most newbies are or will ever be, but I’ve personally missed their catchy side.  In decades past, they still had long, epic songs, but they were balanced out by the catchy ones, but not so much on their last four albums.  I understand most of the songs on the new album are really long — so much so that the album is their first double album even though it’s only 11 tracks — but at least they’ve given us this gem to play over and over in our heads… Enjoy!

The Book Of Souls tracklist:

Disc 1
01 “If Eternity Should Fail”
02 “Speed Of Light”
03 “The Great Unknown”
04 “The Red And The Black”
05 “When The River Runs Deep”
06 “The Book Of Souls”

Disc 2
07 “Death Or Glory”
08 “Shadows Of The Valley”
09 “Tears Of A Clown”
10 “The Man Of Sorrows”
11 “Empire Of The Clouds”

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