The release of a new Iron Maiden album has almost become more than simply music. Along with Priest and the other elder statesmen of the genre, every new release is an affirmation of the continuing health of a beloved musical institution and, by extension, metal itself. For a metalhead a new Maiden album should be greeted with the sort of rapturous masturbation usually reserved for a teenage boy that’s just flicked over to babestation for the first time, and so it was as a loyal acolyte that I made the pilgrimage to HMV to pick up a copy of The Final Frontier, Iron Maiden’s 15th opus.

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