Bruce Dickinson comments (excerpt)

I felt that No Prayer For The Dying was a little on the basic side soundwise.

“It was crap,” he snorts. “I thought the last album sounded crap. This sounds twice as good as Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son. We recorded it 32 track on a Neave desk, all the trimmings. We paid real attention to the drum sound too. We hadn’t had an up-date on the drum sound since Nicko McBrain joined (for 1983’s Piece Of Mind). It had been very much turn up, set the kit up, put the mics in front of it and go. This time we said ‘Let’s make a drum sound that will last until the year 2000’.”

Was this ill-feeling towards the sound of the last album a major factor in the production drive on Fear Of The Dark?

“Yeah,” he starts. “I was really happy with the last album. When we made it I thought ‘Brilliant. This has been a good laugh, bags of enthusiasm, loads of energy’. We all had a good laugh making the album. It was only after about six months that I started listening to it and listening to other contemporary albums. Someone gave me a tape of a US band called Dream Theater, and I listened to it and thought ‘Holy Christ!’ I got hold of some of their demos for their next album and they were recorded on a 24-track and I’m thinking ‘Fucking hell!’ The world has moved on since you could turn up with a drum kit, stick a few mics up and go. The whole thing with this record is gearing up for the ‘90s and going on for the next five, six , seven, eight, ten years! Onto the year 2000, whatever!