Dinosaurs spotted in Western hemisphere.

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Micha Cavaseno: Circus metal, always and forevermore, since the death by vibrato named Bruce Dickinson replaced the boozy off-key roaring of Paul Di’anno — Iron Maiden is the metal band with no problem keeping fans despite putting out more middling to terrible material than their peers or their progenitors. Nothing has changed. Steve Harris pens Rush-style nerd parables over his flashy yet dull triplet runs while Dickinson shakes every note like his trachea is a subway tunnel in the middle of an earthquake. A testimony to how 30 years of corniness in this formula can still be embodied with vigor by a band who would’ve benefited from taking a long break (or at least dying after Powerslave).
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Rebecca A. Gowns: A lesson in how to market your single: 1) come up with a theme that draws in your target demographic — for instance, “video games”; 2) make the single’s music video an animated journey through the history of video games via the band’s mascot; 3) make a damn video game why don’t you? The unified effect is, despite all the doom ‘n’ gloom, rather earnest and cheerful. (Their live shows are unmissable experiences for much the same reason: there is not a trace of world-weariness, but a relentless, invigorating energy pervades, powering them for decades now and perhaps decades more.) The guitars charge forward, peeling off petals of melody as if it was nothing. Bruce Dickinson’s voice rings like a bell. The lyrics are ponderous, edging into goofy, and stuffed with imagery, like every good fantasy novel and metal song should be. Thank God Iron Maiden is still here for us.
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Jonathan Bogart: I’ve always felt an intense secondhand embarrassment about Iron Maiden, probably because in childhood I was one degree from becoming a diehard Maiden fan, but my appetite for nerdy, cartoonish, testosterone operatics fixated on comic books instead. With age, though, comes greater sympathy for the follies and bad taste of youth. My genuine first thought, before the first chorus hit, was “Aw, good for them, still rocking out at their age.” Still five goddamn minutes long though.
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Thomas Inskeep: No one ever said that an Iron Maiden song needed more cowbell. And god, the lyrics — about outer space, I think? — are terrible. But otherwise, it’s the Maiden you know, apart from the fact that Bruce Dickinson can’t quite hit those glass-shattering notes he could 30 years ago. 
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Brad Shoup: Well well, the old maids still have it. I’ve seen this described as fast-paced — I think that’s more a trick of the light. But it yearns like a motherfucker: Bruce’s low-frequency vibrato has all the expected poignance and some admirable push. He gives the chorus its escape velocity. Add in a couple vintage solos — the second of possible folk origin — and this is exactly the kind of lean heavy metal that can obfuscate the double album yet to unfold.
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Megan Harrington: I have tried to get into metal. I understand its appeal on a conceptual level, but in practice, I’m a cheeseball, so my preference is for bands like Poison. Compared to whatever comes out of Norway these days, “Speed of Light” might not even meet the requirements for metal and closer to the shallows of hard rock. But it’s catchy, even in its ever skillful guitar solo. I humbly appreciate that I can get Iron Maiden songs stuck in my head. 
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Alfred Soto: I’m not qualified to place Iron Maiden, as we say, in context. The voice and lyrics are at the Paul Stanley level. The song moves at the speed of a Honda Civic. The solo is fleet-footed nonsense. And yet.
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Patrick St. Michel: This sounds bad, mostly because Bruce Dickinson’s voice just sounds…old? Props for keeping on.
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