When you’re in a “back to basics” metal mood, like I am today, classic Maiden is just a no-brainer. For the first six songs, 1983’s Piece Of Mind is basically metal perfection with rousing boy’s-own stuff like Where Eagles Dare and The Trooper, the soaring Flight Of Icarus and more progressive fare like Still Life and Revelations which lend the album a dark, gothic aspect. Maiden were hitting the tour/record cycle hard in the 80s so, inevitably, the quality starts to get inconsistent towards the end but it would take more than a slightly silly song about cavemen to take down a beast like this.
HEAVY METAL OVERLOAD 
Gonna spin my vinyl today in honour of Scott the Heavy Metal Overlord.
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Do it!
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I shall, Emperor Metalatine.
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So many great songs on this album.
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Great first sentence; pun intended?
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Of course!
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Interesting point about the tour/record cycle. I remember reading one author talking about 1971, and the reason why albums from that year are so great is because of the rapid release cycle, the artists were just creating and not overthinking.
At the same time, it feels like diminishing returns are inevitable & quality can’t keep up with quantity if the pace is too fast – I’m curious what the optimal cycle length would be, hopefully someone one day puts together some sort of analysis!
In any event, I’m glad any slight consistency dips didn’t derail Maiden!
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Interesting stuff, Geoff. Maybe the shorter running times of albums back then helped too? Also, I don’t think the consistency dips are always a bad thing as such. In Maiden’s case, the “lesser” songs are still enjoyable and give the album its own identity. Sometimes albums are greater than the sum of their parts and a lot of the best albums of all time have peaks and valleys.
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Agreed – my favourite Beatles album is the sprawling double ‘The Beatles’ and few would use the term ‘consistency’ as its biggest selling point!
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What is cause and what is just correlation? Most people have their best ideas when they’re young. They are also touring more, but that is also because they are young, it’s not the cause of having better ideas. Iron Maiden is a good counter-example: the gaps between their albums are longer than they used to be, but, especially if you take away the nostalgia factor, I think that their last few albums are their best.
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I don’t see why touring would be the cause of better ideas either. Youth has to be a factor and working under pressure maybe gets good results from some artists.
I saw an interview with the Metallica managers which was enlightening, They said how each album they released in their early career changed their lives in some way. But then they get to a point where that stops being the case and it gets harder to be motivated/inspired. I guess a similar dynamic might play out with others? But Maiden do seem to continue to create good and interesting albums regardless.
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You had me from “When you’re in a “back to basics” metal mood”.
And I couldn’t agree more.
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