Review Summary: Band's effort worth waiting for.
The new Iron Maiden did not convince me from the first listening session, just like the reviewer gave the album a lot of time. In my opinion, there are such compositions as "Stratego", "The Days of Future Past", an interesting rocker in the form of "Writing on the Wall", "The Darkest Hour" (great solos and atmosphere, as for the lyrics - actually a bit fancy) in the great "Hell on Earth" at the end. In the context of the album as a whole, I would highlight solos, especially those played by Adrian Smith. As for the rest of the tracks - the obvious wick seems to be "The Death of Celts", not a successful sequel to "The Clansman". The thing on the 17th studio album of IM is completely unnecessary.
From the remaining four works, it would be worth removing recurring motifs that artificially prolong the compositions, introducing chaos, and in addition they constitute a kind of self-plagiarism. Where is the reason for this state of affairs? Probably it is the dictatorship of Harris, who imagined himself to be an excellent producer and no one can therefore have anything to say ... . Also, many of them contained a substantive approach to the content of the album along with the analysis of individual tracks. Therefore, if we assume that the reviews were written "on my knee" and for the sake of "peace of mind", the same regularity should be applied to (literally) all reviews ever published by opinion-forming portals / magazines.
The keys in Maiden's music appeared as early as 1986 (though as a guitar effect), but this time the issue lies in their excessive emphasis in the mix. Though surprisingly, it doesn't bother me too much. However, I am disturbed by long and excessive references to motifs that we have heard on IM discs many times. Senjutsu, in my opinion, is not a crap or a pile, but it is a more reflective, sentimental and at the same time definitely less hit-and-miss album than many previous ones. Is that a disadvantage? Yes and no. Probably the more orthodox fans of classic metal / IM felt disappointed, because there are no bouncy songs like "The Trooper" or firecrackers like "Aces High". We only got a substitute for the old IM in "Straty" and "Days of Future Past". But I think that people who liked the band after 2000 should find a lot of good in Senjutsu sounds.
How the fans reacted to the album - the album did well on the market, maybe not as well as the previous few, but it is worth remembering that years ago the sales results were based on physical copies, today the margin is because most of the recordings / albums are purchased in the form of streaming. Maideni, and many other veterans of the rock scene and beyond, strongly rely on selling physical copies. In total, the album at the top in 23 countries (after Wiki) and several dozen in the Top 5 is an excellent result for British heavy metal veterans.
