One thing I've noticed about their later material, from Brave New World onwards, is this tendency to try and be to clever. When you listen to their old stuff, from Iron Maiden through to Fear Of The Dark, the songs are constructed in two ways. They either start at a certain tempo and pretty much stick with it or they build and build and build and then reach a peak and finish. This works well as you'd have your three to five minute songs that just go along and then you'd have your longer "epic" kind of songs which are usually six or seven minutes. The obvious exception is Ancient Mariner at 13 minutes. Nowadays it seems to me that Maiden do to many songs maybe start out slow, build up to a peak, then change tempo again chugging along then try to build up again before winding down. It's things like that that get boring. It worked for Mariner but that was a one off. They end up with a good idea for a four minute song turning into a boring eight minute song. Whether it's Harris or not I don't know but it pisses me off. I hate putting a new cd in and seeing that it's 76 minutes long or something.
