OK, just finished listening to Sacrifice. I guess the thing is, yeah, almost nothing in the history of metal goes as low as Maiden did with Virtual XI, and I'm sure Lemmy never wrote a nine minute song where he repeats a chorus for half the duration, so fair enough. Still, after the first two songs some of these riffs sound like poor grunge riffs. This isn't bad, and I know just one listen isn't good to judge things, but I dunno, a band coasting on a similar sound for decades with the occasional contemporary rock/metal bit thrown in isn't the good kind of consistency. I'd rather have Maiden's new stuff where they write great songs alongside the garbage (although the title track sounds pretty damn excellent here).
Some of Dee's drumming is fucking insane on this thing though, like he's doing straight-up tech-metal stuff at points that I can't follow at all, loving that. For that alone I'm going to start exploring more of these albums.
