


Relatively short and straightforwardly hard hitting, it sounds appealingly like the basic essence of Maiden in concentrated form. Most of 1988’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son LP – a concept album – was suitably proggy, but The Evil That Men Do kicks against that particular trend. east London – in a desire for escape from grim urban reality. It’s sharp, punchy and founded – despite the lyrical references to LA, which sound like the wishful work of someone who has never been further than Leytonstone.
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Running Free (1980)įounded on a warp-speed take on glam’s glitterbeat, Running Free is Maiden’s early, Paul Di’Anno-fronted years in miniature. The lyrics of the two-part saga of Charlotte the Harlot, a sort of metal equivalent of the Police’s Roxanne, haven’t aged terribly well – “All the men that are constantly drooling / It’s no life for you, stop all that screwing” – but the music on 22 Acacia Avenue is taut, dramatic and utterly thrilling. Among Maiden’s multitude of war epics, it might be the most brutal and horrifying – it certainly doesn’t sound like the work of multimillionaires in their 60s. Harris summarised 2006’s acclaimed LP A Matter of Life and Death as “heavier than we’ve ever been”, which certainly fits The Longest Day. The Somewhere in Time LP generated a degree of controversy among Iron Maiden diehards for its flagrant use of – gasp! – synthesisers, but the notion that this newfound interest might blunt their sound is demolished by the Adrian Smith-penned Sea of Madness: prima facie evidence that the album is under-rated. Dickinson performed Dance of Death live dressed as the Grim Reaper, summing the track up: it’s knowingly preposterous and genuinely gripping. “Let me tell you a story to chill the bones …” opens Dickinson in hammy style that has more to do with horror films than Dance of Death’s actual inspiration, Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.
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Hell on Earth (2021)Ģ021’s Senjutsu is a double album that’s best devoured in full – evidence that, nearly 50 years after they formed, Iron Maiden are in a remarkable creative purple patch – but if you had to pick one track, it might be the Harris-penned closer Hell on Earth: plaintive and explosive, with a killer vocal. Bruce Dickinson and Janick Gers at Wembley Arena in 1993.
