Iron Maiden Songs - The Aftermath Lyrics

Iron Maiden - The Aftermath

Iron Maiden - The Aftermath Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: The X Factor
Released: 1995

The Aftermath Lyrics

Silently to silence fall
In the fields of futile war
Toys of death are spitting lead
Where boys that were our soldiers bled
war horse and war machine

Curse the name of liberty
Marching on as if they should
Mix in the dirt our brothers' blood

In the mud and rain
What are we fighting for
Is it worth the pain is it worth dying for
Who will take the blame
Why did they make a war
Questions that come again
Should we be fighting at all

Once a ploughman hitched his team
Here he sowed his little dream
Now bodies arms and legs are strewn
Where mustard gas and barbwire bloom
Each moment's like a year
I've nothing left inside for tears
Comrades dead or dying lie
I'm left alone asking why

After the war
Left feeling no one has won
After the war
What does a soldier become

Writer/s: GERS, JANICK / HARRIS, STEPHEN PERCY / COOKE, BAYLEY
Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

The Aftermath Song Chart

This song is one of Blaze Bayley's most significant contributions to Iron Maiden. The former Wolfsbane lead singer took over on vocals for Maiden starting with the The X Factor album and continuing through their 1998 release Virtual XI. He wrote the song with bassist Steve Harris and guitarist Janick Gers.

The song deals with World War I, and is written from the perspective of a soldier in the trenches. Blaze Bayley's great-grandfather fought and died in that war; Blaze had a photo of him in his notebook which triggered the memory and led to this song.

By all accounts, World War I battles were horrific. That's reflected in the lyric as we hear about the carnage and the soldier questions why he is there in the first place.

Blaze Bayley had been reading a lot of poetry from the World War I era when he composed this song. In particular, Bayley read the work of Siegfried Sassoon, a British poet who fought on the front lines in France and later became disillusioned with the war. Sassoon gained widespread acclaim in America for his novel, Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man.

Blaze Bayley has a very emotional connection with this song, which hits him hard when he performs it. In our 2014 interview with Bayley , he said: "It's a song that I occasionally do in my setlist, but it's heavy in a very emotional way, so I find myself getting very bound up with that song and sometimes mentally it's a dark place to go. So I don't always do it in my set."