On September 6, 2021, Labor Day here in the States, just a few days after the long-awaited release of Iron Maiden's 17th studio album, Senjutsu, my great friend Paul Lembo and I met to do a deep dive on our thoughts on the album. We set up a mic, hit record, and had an absolute blast engaging in a favorite activity - talking all things Maiden. Two hours later, I had a very unstructured discussion that I had no idea how to edit into a show. I knew it was too long, I knew the discussion was scattered, I knew that the volume between the two of us wasn't well-engineered. I didn't care. I love talking music with my friends, and I had so much fun with my buddy opining about Senjutsu that I didn't really have the heart to start trimming.

So now, almost 3 weeks later, I'm doing what I should have done in the first place - just put it out there without changing a damn thing. Well, I did cut it up into 3 overly long episodes, but what follows is our version of a conversation taking place all over the world, as millions of rabid metal fans dig into this new record from their favorite band, and proceed to analyze, criticize, and praise every tiny detail of this new release. Enjoy...

NVB10.7 Part 2 of 3

We finally properly start tackling the songs in sequence. For a while anyway. Topics include the strength of Nicko’s drumming on this record, the sound of the synth samples, why Adrian doesn’t still use guitar synth, why the guitar is always doubling the vocal melody, Janick’s strengths and weaknesses, the middle channel traffic of the mix, and of course, why these songs are too long.