The Chemical Wedding (Bruce Dickinson album)

Dickinson: "Each song has a sort of frame in which it operates. The first song is about fear, the second song is about tragedy, the third song is about union. You could pick a theme or a topic for each song so that's what the song is about and then you put it in a frame. For example, one of the songs is about failure and the song is called "The Trumpets of Jericho". In the story of the trumpets of Jericho in the Bible, the walls fall down when the tribes of Israel walk around the city and blow their trumpets. Except in this song they don't, it doesn't work. You've done everything right, everything's cool but the wall's still standing. And what do you do? How do you face up to that fact? And it's all part of the whole alchemy thing. What were the alchemists trying to do? They were trying to achieve something that was virtually impossible, they spent their whole lives trying to do it, and all of them failed, or pretty damn near all of them failed. So, what does that feel like, and how does that work, and why keep carrying on. So that's the way the songs kind of work. And you don't have to go into them in all this detail, you could just sit back there and let it hit you over the head like a sledgehammer cause the album works it's just a really heavy album. But it's all there if you want to dig through the words."[1]

According to an interview with Rock Brigade in October 1998, Bruce mentioned that the band recorded a cover of the Scorpions song, "The Zoo". Although never released as a b-side or bonus track, it did see release that same year on the compilation ECW: Extreme Music.

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[2]
Chronicles of Chaos	9.5/10[3]
Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal	9/10[4]
Rock Hard	9/10[5]
Sputnikmusic	4.5/5[6]

Critical response to The Chemical Wedding was generally favourable, with AllMusic praising its "modern metal aesthetic".[2] Sputnikmusic said, "Professionally written and recorded, Bruce Dickinson once again pours his soul into his music, and the result is spectacular", and went on to deem it "one of the best metal albums of the late 90s".[6] In 2005, The Chemical Wedding was ranked number 388 in Rock Hard magazine's book The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time.[7] In his review, Canadian journalist Martin Popoff praised Dickinson for finding "creative wells that seems limitless, and groovy and literary all at once" and for having recorded an album "of phat, traditional, somber and aged heavy metal that sounds like bloody, beefy Piece of Mind-era Maiden crossed with Subhuman Race-era Skid Row."[4]

Original pressings also include an untitled hidden track after 2 minutes of silence. It is a brief spoken piece that says: "And all this vegetable world appeared on my left foot. As a bright sandal, formed immortal of precious stones and gold. I stooped down, and bound it on. To walk forward through eternity".

Band members

• Bruce Dickinson – lead vocals
• Adrian Smith – guitars, keyboards
• Roy Z – guitars, keyboards, producer, engineer, mixing
• Eddie Casillas – bass guitar
• David Ingraham – drums, percussion

Guest musicians

• Arthur Brown – voice on tracks 5, 7, 13
• Greg Schultz – keyboards
• Frazeeke MC, The Guru, Willy 666, Craig Lichtenstein – background vocals on track 4

Production

• Stan Katayama – engineer, mixing at Brooklyn Studios, Los Angeles
• Joe Floyd – engineer
• Richard "The Guru" Carette, Sam Storey, Thom Banghardt – assistant engineers
• Dave Collins – mastering at A&M Mastering Studios, Los Angeles

• The Chemical Wedding at Discogs
• The Chemical Wedding at Last.fm
• The Chemical Wedding at MusicBrainz (list of releases)