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...

NVB10.6 Part 1 of 3

This episode audio starts without preamble, as we jump right into the middle of a conversation, as Paul relates first getting into Maiden and we talk a little bit about songs that are hard to listen to as they are so closely tied to our good friend. Finally after about 5 minutes I properly introduce Paul and what we’re doing.

As far as the album goes, we discuss the title, Sun and Steel beer, Paul's wonderfully over the top Maiden jeans vest ("battle jacket"), where Janick & Dave shop, why this album is far too long, and skip around a bit on discussing the songs, largely as pertains to song length.