Reviewing Every Iron Maiden Album (Part 2): Killers
I was originally going to post this a while ago, but since the stupid post didn't turn out, and only half of the songs were reviewed, I had to redo the whole entire thing. This time around, I will reviewing the second, and final Paul Di'Anno album, Killers, which will continue my series "Reviewing Every Iron Maiden Album", in which I will review every single Iron Maiden Album, from their 1980 self-titled album, to the brand new Book of Souls. This album I'm reviewing today, their second album, will be Killers.I have decided, that this time around, instead of reviewing every single individual track on this album, I guess I'll just spend the whole review writing about why the album was good, and probably some great tracks, probably because of what happened when I originally tried to review this album. Anyways, the review will now begin.
This is actually a pretty great Iron Maiden album, with Paul Di'Anno, and I did like a lot of the great songs from this album. The Ides of March started off this pretty great album, as a great instrumental similar to Judas Priest's "The Hellion". Wrathchild is also a great song by Paul Di'Anno and better than Electric Eye, which are both pretty similar, since they have a lot of similarities, such as they started with an instrumental not a part of the actual song, and make great heavy metal classics. However, I decided that The Ides of March/Wrathchild is much better than The Hellion/Electric Eye, because I just like Wrathchild better. However, those two songs are just one thing that make the album good as it is. Their are many other great songs such as Murders in the Rue Morgue, Another Life, and Innocent Exile. All three of these songs are actually not too bad, and I guess Another Life is my favorite of the three, probably just because. Genghis Khan is a great Instrumental that shows the band's true talent, and It's hard to decide whether it's better than Translyvania, from their previous album, as both of them are incredibly great instrumentals. However, this one does a better job showing the talent of Steve Harris, Dave Murray, Clive Burr, and the new guitarist, Adrian Smith. Killers and Purgatory are two of my favorite songs from the album, as they just make some of the best metal classics on the album. Purgatory is some thrash-like song, and Killers is better than most Paul Di'Anno songs, which include Strange World and Prowler. However, while those two songs are really good, I've decided that my favorite song from the album, and probably my favorite Paul Di'Anno Iron Maiden song has to go to Prodigal Son. It's just a really great song, and I like the unique sound in this one, as they use different, spanish-like song, with some heavy metal in it, and easily in my top 5 Iron Maiden songs, because of that. It's just a really great song, with a great metal solos as well in the middle of the song. Twilight Zone is a great song, better than Sanctuary, and better than a few of the songs in this album, probably Murders in the Rue Morgue, Another Life, and Innocent Exile. The album then closes off with Drifter, another great song that finishes off this great album, and is pretty good.
While there are a lot of great songs in this album, Innocent Exile is probably my least favorite in the album. It just seems pretty weak, and other songs like Wrathchild are much better than this song. Wrathchild is great, but it doesn't deserve to be the most popular song in the album, because I have seen much better songs in the album. Prodigal Son is my favorite track, but other great tracks include Drifter, Twilight Zone, Killers, Purgatory, and Genghis Khan. I couldn't tell you which one is the best, and which one is the worst, but they are all good songs. Steve Harris did a great job songwriting this time, as he wrote every song except Killers and Twilight Zone all by himself, and even those two other songs, was he apart of the writing. The album wasn't nearly as diverse of the self-titled album, but still had some great sound, even though it was nowhere near as good as the early Bruce Dickinson albums, mainly Piece of Mind and Powerslave.
The album seems to be pretty good, considering this was a Paul Di'Anno album, and not Bruce Dickinson. Dave Murray returns better than ever, and we get to see Adrian Smith for the very first time. Clive Burr does some great drumming in The Ides of March and Genghis Khan, and just the three albums he was in proves that he is about as good as Nickio McBrain. Steve Harris did a great job with his basslines in Wrathchild and Innocent Exile, and wrote a lot of great songs in this album by himself, and Paul Di'Anno's vocals are actually pretty good in this album, maybe better than the self-titled debut album. Each of these members have put together a great album full of talent, and some diversity, considering some songs, mainly Prodigal Son sound differently, while keeping the greatness of Traditional Heavy Metal. Purgatory, the thrash-like song I was talking about earlier, just proves that Iron Maiden played thrash metal before Metallica did, and they aren't even thrash metal at all. That is just one of the reasons why I like Iron Maiden better than Metallica. The sound of this album may not be as good as other albums, but still pretty good, and just as good as the original album. I can't explain the sound, but all I know about it was that its better than most of the metal albums in the 2000s, such as Metallica's Death Magnetic, when they didn't care about any production, and wanted to be in the loudness wars.
The Verdict
86/100 - Well, the album isn't as good as the self-titled album (Which received a 87 out of 100, by the way), but it's pretty close. Like the self-titled album, it had everything a great album needed, but didn't have the best songs. Prodigal Son was a great song, and better than Phantom of the Opera, and other songs such as Killers, Purgatory, and Genghis Khan are all good, but Translyvania, Strange World, and Prowler are also good. It was really the diversity of the first album that made it better than this one, even though this album had some of the better songs. Just like I thought, The Self-Titled album had the potential to be the better Paul Di'Anno Iron Maiden album. And finally, I recommend this album if you liked the Self-Titled album a lot, or if you want something slightly more progressive than the other 80s Iron Maiden albums.
There finishes the second review of the "Reviewing Every Iron Maiden Album" series, and the next album I will be reviewing, will be the first of the Bruce Dickinson Albums, which is called "The Number of the Beast".