The Chemical Wedding (Bruce Dickinson album)


The Chemical Wedding is the fifth solo album by English heavy metal singer Bruce Dickinson, released on 15 September 1998 through Sanctuary Records. The record draws some inspiration from the works of William Blake, featuring sung and spoken excerpts of his prophetic works and poetry, and with cover art from his painting The Ghost of a Flea, although the name of the album and its title track derive from the Rosicrucian manifesto the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. As with the previous album, it featured Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith, then a member of Dickinson's solo outfit.
The film, Chemical Wedding, with a screenplay by Dickinson, was released in May 2008. It features the title track from the album on its soundtrack, but concerns a story about the reincarnation of Aleister Crowley and is otherwise unrelated.

Lyrical themes

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."
Metal Storm: "The lyrics sound as if they were copied right away out of the unholy scriptures, capture the most of the time very empty feeling, warm and comforting sounds you can only expect from the 'Chemical Wedding' and 'The Alchemist' songs."

Reception

Critical response to The Chemical Wedding was generally favourable, with Allmusic praising its "modern metal aesthetic". 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". In 2005, The Chemical Wedding was ranked number 388 in Rock Hard magazine's book of The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time.

Track listing

Additional recordings

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 "".

Personnel

Guest musicians