By BRIAN GIFFIN
FROM leading lights of the late-70s British metal scene to world-conquering superstars less than 10 years later, Iron Maiden is one of the most influential and popular bands of all time.
With millions of albums sold worldwide, constantly sold-out tours, a string of British Top 40 hits few recording artists can rival and a ridiculously loyal fanbase, Iron Maiden survived a mid-career slump that would have ended most bands and staged a 21st Century resurgence the likes of which have rarely been seen. Having released their 17th album in 2021, the band are once again neck deep in a world tour (that will, again, miss Australia) which we’ll report on when we see them in Birmingham soon.
Establishing a trend early on for finishing albums with epic-length tracks, let’s take a look at every one of them in order from worst to best.
- “The Unbeliever” | The X Factor | 1995
The X Factor is a grim and lifeless record, and “The Unbeliever” is as good an example as any other of how far gone Iron Maiden were from their heady days. By now they seemed to be writing long closers just for the sake of it and way before the chorus (just two minutes in) Blaze Bayley sounds bored. Even when it lifts, no one seems very interested and “The Unbeliever” just drags on for another six minutes, going nowhere.
- “Drifter” | Killers | 1981
The least distinguished closer of the band’s early career, “Drifter” – like most of the songs on Killers – actually predates the material from the debut and comes across very much as a track from an earlier time. While urgent and punkish in its speed and delivery, “Drifter” lacks any real charisma and direction, as aimless as its own lyrics.
- “Alexander the Great” | Somewhere in Time | 1986
A few of the songs on Somewhere in Time were attempts to break from the formula Iron Maiden had set for themselves. “Alexander the Great” was not one of them. Unlike previous album closers, this one was a turgid, uninspired listicle of facts that read like an encyclopaedia entry instead of one of Harris’ usual narrative pieces with a tired, simplistic chorus (something that would, soon, become all too familiar with this band), saved only by some (as usual) wonderful soloing, particularly by Adrian Smith.
- “Mother Russia” | No Prayer for the Dying | 1990
The one truly bright spot on an otherwise bland album, “Mother Russia” probably saved No Prayer for the Dying from complete oblivion. On a record that was in most other ways a complete miscalculation, the marching beats and regal symphonic passages was a slight return to the epic style they had otherwise tried to ignore elsewhere, but compared to the glorious sagas of the previous decade, even this one didn’t really compare.
- “The Journeyman” | Dance of Death | 2003
One of the band’s more heartfelt outings, “The Journeyman” plays out in Iron Maiden’s conventional format, but the usual instrumentation is completely replaced by lush symphonics, acoustics and a vaguely folky feel. Given the outright exuberance of the rest of Dance of Death, this track is something of a complete oddity that pushed the boundaries of what everyone expected from them.
- “The Legacy” | A Matter of Life and Death | 2006
Closing out the immense and under-rated war-themed A Matter of Life and Death, “The Legacy” was something of a reawakening of Iron Maiden’s progressive aspirations. With each section building more majestically on the part before, the band seemed to have reclaimed some of their (much) earlier love for intricate arrangements and pulled together the dark themes with a hint of their 80s grandiosity, if not so much of their nimbleness and energy.
- “Hell on Earth” | Senjutsu | 2021
Coming at the end of an entire album of lofty progressive excursions, “Hell on Earth” is probably the least of the triumvirate of Steve Harris songs that take up most of Senjutsu’s second disc. With Maiden’s long-established trope of extended, slow-building intros of entwined guitar lines and jangling bass, Hell on Earth suffers a little from Harris’ tendency to fall back on old formulas but there is enough tension and dynamics in this rousing melodic closer to keep the interest right to the end.
- “When the Wild Wind Blows” | The Final Frontier | 2010
The Final Frontier’s elongated closer tends to feel cobbled together from many of the band’s previous ideas and hardly breaks new ground for one of their epics (which, by now, is most of them). However, the band injects the song’s eleven minute ebb and flow with a level of pathos and emotion for its subject that makes it one of the better of their post-90s album finishers.
- “Como Estais Amigos” | Virtual XI | 1998
Coming at the end of another lacklustre – if considerably less boring – effort, “Como Estais Amigos” is a true stand out in Maiden’s catalogue and because it’s on Virtual XI, one that’s often overlooked. A surprisingly heartfelt ballad from a band not known for them, written by the group’s two newest members Janick Gers and Blaze Bayley, this is the most unconventional of all Iron Maiden songs, one of the only tracks where the much-maligned vocalist actually shines and a fitting swansong to his troubled tenure.
- “The Thin Line Between Love and Hate” | Brave New World | 2000
Dave Murray doesn’t put his hand up in the songwriting department too often, but when he does the results are usually worthwhile. Brave New World’s “Thin Line…” begins as a fairly typical mid-paced Maiden romp but by halfway through it’s become something altogether different as Murray and Dickinson team up to guide the song into a truly moving finish to the first album of their renewal period.
- “Only the Good Die Young” | Seventh Son of a Seventh Son | 1988
For the first time since Killers, Maiden closed out an album with a shorter piece. “Only the Good Die Young” is a nicely melodic mid-paced rocker than serves as the final part to the album’s rather clunky and ill-defined concept, a memorable track with a big, hooky chorus that finishes on a big rock ending before segueing into the theme that opened the record, tying up Seventh Son… probably more effectively than a longer track.
- “To Tame A Land” | Piece of Mind | 1983
Piece of Mind’s closing Dune-inspired epic suffers a little from the clumsy way Harris tries to interpret the story lyrically. Dickinson does his best with the forced metre but the song is more than saved by the arrangement, entering with quiet Eastern-style guitar lines, then a huge stomping riff and another spectacular ending that highlights what a superb and special team the band had in Dave Murray and Adrian Smith.
- “Fear of the Dark” | Fear of the Dark | 1992
On an album that’s way too long and with too many clangers, the title track stands out and holds up today as a live favourite, even if it steers too closely to Steve Harris’ usual formula for his epic songs. In terms of structure it’s not far removed from the likes of “Hallowed…” and “Phantom…”, but it is possessed of an incurably hummable melody that gets the masses singing every time it’s aired. Which is always.
- “Iron Maiden” | Iron Maiden | 1980
Irrespective of Steve Harris’ claims to the contrary, the early Iron Maiden sound owed as much to the rawness and speed of punk as it did to his own lofty progressive ambitions. The band’s signature tune perfectly encapsulates the raw energy and youthful exuberance of a pub-level band about to break out. It’s a bit odious now, but in 1980 it defined the British metal movement.
- “Empire of the Clouds” | The Book of Souls | 2015
Few other bands would have the audacity to unleash 92-minute long double albums onto the world so far into an era where such things had become virtually extinct, and no one else but Iron Maiden would finish such a record with a grandiloquent masterpiece almost cinematic in its scope and execution. While there’s an argument it could have cut a few minutes from the middle without really losing any of its tension and drama, “Empire of the Clouds” is a true standout in the band’s catalogue, where the ringing classical piano chords, tasteful guitars, orchestral swell and swinging drums build on Dickinson’s theatrical narrative of folly and heartbreak, delivered with the perfect range of emotion. A magnificent display of truly epic songwriting.
- “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” | Powerslave | 1984
Powerslave was Iron Maiden’s creative and artistic pinnacle, and their saga-length take on Coleridge’s 1798 lyrical ballad was the band asserting their legacy as something more than just another metal band. A multi-faceted epic of mood and tension that incorporated direct passages from the poem including a long mid-section featuring a sample of Richard Burton orating it, “Rime…” is Maiden at their most majestic and grandiose and became the template for progressive heavy metal from then on.
- “Hallowed Be Thy Name” | The Number of the Beast | 1982
The early masterpiece that more than any other track from this period truly defined the greatness of Iron Maiden and their future progressive pretensions. The long-building dramatic tension, heightened by the almost operatic delivery from Bruce Dickinson, the extended twin soloing and the climactic conclusion set a benchmark for Steve Harris’ epic song-writing from this time forward, but while the band went on to top it in length and grandiosity, “Hallowed Be Thy Name”’s elegant combination of narrative power and musical drama remains unmatched.
