I don't like the album Fear of the Dark for the most part. But I've always liked Chains of Misery.

However, I do like No Prayer for the Dying a lot. That's my guilty pleasure Maiden album. And I don't mean just Holy Smoke and Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter, which are the best songs on the album. I also really like Tailgunner, Run Silent Run Deep and Hooks in You. Public Enema Number One is the only track on that album I don't really care much for.

Piece of Mind... the first four songs are pretty damn good. then the album loses a bit of quality. Sun and Steel is a fun song, though.

Asfor the Di'Anno era, Killers is a kick ass album! S/T is also pretty good ofc.

I haven't been keeping up with threads lately, but was the previous FFA thread locked because of AboveTheThrone's "situation" and how ridiculous it sounds? I mean, how can a 25 year old not realize that moving in with someone after one month is just disastrous? He sounds like a total virgin, too! I guess it takes someone like him to destroy a thread that huge. Well done, m8.

Btw, what do you guys think of maiden's cover of Jethro Tull's Cross Eyed Mary?

This must be the first time in a long while a FFA went 5 pages of just metal talk. I like it. Keep it this way. Metal is cool.

New Slayer album 2017!

Fuuuckin Slaaaaaaaayer

I thought Slayer were gonna call it quits after Hanneman's death. But I guess that band never knows when to quit, eh?

I'm yet to listen to their last album.

I didn't like it as much as Elf's cover. I think Maiden made it sound way too intense for what it was, but that's just me. What did you think of it?

I think it's great, but not their kinda thing. I'm a big fan of both bands, so I guess that's why. It's so much better than the horrific Budgie cover they did *shudders*.

Bruce seemed to struggle a bit during the song. He seemed to put quite some strain on his voice. Not a terrible cover but definitely not a great one.

That album was my first exposure to post-death metal Therion. Absolutely perfect introductory album to the band. It's like a greatest hits collection but even better since the performance is so great.

I never in a million years would have thought they'd make another record.

Not serious.

That's not too far off from where I stand on Piece of Mind. To me, the first three tracks, "The Trooper" and "To Tame a Land" are five of the best tracks that Maiden ever put together. With them and three or four others to replace "Die with Your Boots On," "Still Life," "Quest for Fire" and "Sun and Steel," Piece could have been Maiden's best album. Oh well...

After Powerslave, Killers is my second favorite Maiden album.

Die With Your Boots On is great!

More importantly: Odz Manouk is working on new material!

yo for real? that shit off the split with Tukaaria is still fucking ridiculous imo. can't wait for new bangers.

Nope. That was my introduction to Therion as well. Still pretty damn good, and I need to buy a copy of it. Dark Princess Naamah was a ripper.

I fully fucking agree with that sentiment on Piece of Mind. The first five songs (as sick as I am of The Trooper at this point, it's still an incredible song) are one of the best albums you'll ever hear in your life, but after that the album just nosedives in quality. Obviously, Maiden in 1983 nosediving is still better than most bands' best material, but Still Life, Quest for Fire, Sun and Steel, and To Tame a Land are very clearly inferior to the rest of the songs that came before them.

Wtf the second half ("Sun and Steel" excluded) is the best part of the album. I know people prefer catchy hooks over real music, but that goes a bit far.

I think the first side is stronger overall (Revelations may just be my favorite Maiden song), but the second side rocks as well, with the exception of Quest for Fire. To Tame a Land is especially good, the solo/outro is great. If you wanna talk about Maiden albums with filler, look no further than Number of the Beast.

I'm one of the weird guys who didn't like Revelations or Flight of Icarus all that much for a long time, actually, and oddly enough always thought that Die with Your Boots On and Sun and Steel were wrongfully overlooked, so my view on Piece of Mind is different than most. Flight of Icarus grew on me but I still think Revelations is their most overrated track.

And I don't care what anybody says, The Number of the Beast is a stone classic and I love almost everything about it. Invaders rules and 22 Acacia Avenue is right up there with Be Quick or Be Dead, Die with Your Boots On, and Flash of the Blade in the realm of their most underrated songs.

Have to say that I agree BH, Number of the Beast full of filler?! I considered it a canon in the Maiden discography, but to say that it's full of filler material just seems... an odd thing to say. But hey, "horses for courses"...

What the hell is wrong with "Quest for Fire"? Some of Bruce's all time best vocal melodies, and that lead part is just amazing.

That album is still probably my second favorite Iron Maiden album, beating out Seventh Son and SIT by small margins each. I think the only track at any sort of fault is gangland, but even then it's not BAD. I don't really have a nostalgia bias with it either, as I ended up getting Number of the Beast like a few months after I had the other Bruce Maiden albums. Idk why I never really wanted it, but man, it quickly became one of my faves of all time.

I have an odd problemo with Piece of Mind, that being that I don't really like Where Eagles Dare. It still hast not grown on me, and I actually always start the album with Revelations now. I also think To Tame A Land is good, but soooo overrated. I'm in the Revelations fan boat however, that one and The Trooper are my faves on that album with Die With Your Boots on right behind 'em.

Sun and Steel has one of my favorite moments ever though, in which Bruce goes "Life is like a wheel, rollin' on and on!" just before the solo. I just think that is so cool

sc2112, I see your point, although "Where Eagles Dare" is my favorite track off of that record (and I agree with the opinion that the second half is weaker). I have a similar odd problem - I never really liked the title track from Number of the Beast. It doesn't stand out one bit, compared to the other songs on that album.

I'd still take the Powerslave/Somewhere in Time/Seventh Son stretch of Iron Maiden's career over Number of the Beast or Piece of Mind. Those three own anything else they have done before or after by a significant margin.

I haven't seen anything about this anywhere, but with only five live dates scheduled so far I suppose it's possible an album could be out at the end of the year.

Powerslave stands tall over every album I've ever heard with the exception of a select handful. It earns the sparkly 100% from me. I think they peaked on that one, but also did not trough at all on the following two. Behind it would be Number of the Beast, and then SIT and Seventh Son duking it out for 3rd and 4th place. It depends on the day on which one I like more. SIT probably wins by a hair, but Seventh Son has flipping Moonchild which "rules divine" on like fifty fackin' levels.

I AM HE!

THE BORNLESS ONE!

THE FALLEN ANGEL WATCHING YOU!

It's utterly bizarre to me that someone would prefer Quest For Fire and Still Life to Where Eagles Dare and Revelations. I certainly know people who think The Trooper is better than anything on the A-side, but I don't understand how they can like it better than the first three songs of the album either.

Die With Your Boots On is certainly trumped by two songs on the B-side.

All of Piece of Mind is quality. The first half is stronger than the second, but eh, I hardly think it is as extreme as some people say - they're still good songs and "Still Life" and "To Tame a Land" are just as good as anything on the A-side. One half of the album being better doesn't make the other half suck ass, is my point I guess. This is easily one of their best albums.

Peace of Mind was my first maiden album, but I don't think it's as good as the ones that came before. Most of the songs are still great though really. "Revelations" sounds a hell of a lot like a somewhat more aggressive take on something from Wishbone Ash's Argus. "Where Eagles Dare"...not sure if it was the first Maiden song I heard but it must have been pretty close, and it floored me so much I was really happy to pick up this album as my first one. It's still probably my favourite song on the record all told. I don't have a problem with "Quest for Fire" and agree with Drone that it's probably an underrated tune, but I really don't get into "Sun and Steel" much. that was probably the first time a maiden chorus just became too much, and it's not even very good to begin with. As for my favourite song of theirs .... well, it's probably "Killers". So much energy and drive, just gets me every time.

That Lepaca Klifoth album was my first experience with Therion as well, mostly because Theli was extremely new at the time and the store didn't have it, so I went for wha tI thought was probably the next best thing. Talking of those weak vocals, this is gonna sound extremely weird, but to me it always sounded like the dude from Biohazard singing. Or semi-melodically hollering, as he used to do sometimes. pretty cool album regardless; there are some really great riffs there. I ought to investigate Demonoid.

A lot of albums I got in my early days of metal listening were the newest ones the bands had available at the time. I suspect that's true of many.

I never got into Gangland or Invaders (as well as Total Eclipse if you consider that part of the album), and I've kind of soured on Run to the Hills over the years. Maybe "full of filler" is an overstatement, and The Prisoner, Children of the Damned, and Hallowed Be Thy Name are all all-time classics, but it's probably my second least-favorite 80s release from Maiden.

I'd probably rank them like so:

1. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
2. Powerslave
3. Piece of Mind
4. Somewhere in Time
5. Iron Maiden
6. Number of the Beast
7. Killers

Powerslave > SiT > s/t > SSoaSS > PoM > TNotB > Killers for me personally, but you saw me gushing about TNotB a few posts up so the fact that it's so low says more about just how mindbogglingly good Maiden was in their prime. Like, yeah Killers is my least treasured of their 80s output but it's still an easy 85%+ album on my least forgiving day. Seven indisputable genre-defining classics in a row is something to behold.

SIT > Seventh Son > Piece Of Mind > s/t > Powerslave > Number of the Beast > Killers for me. But yeah, they are so consistent that this isn't a knock on any of them really.

Aaaaand the peaceful discussion about Iron Maiden has officialy come to an end.

Lepaca Kliffoth may have some flaws, but Riders of Theli is a fucking awesome headbanger with a cool solo to boot:

No it hasn't, just ignore anything that isn't metal and continue to add to the conversation. It's pretty simple, tbh.

I'm writing some super evil, heavy metallic synthwave that's going to have an epic 30+ second guitar solo section. Sounds kind of like Morbid Angel + Perturbator for an extremely quick comparison. It would be kinda cool to do some sort of outrun remix of an Iron Maiden song. Probably one of their shorter and more upbeat ones would be best.

I can't get into Somewhere in Time at all anymore. I'm really not sure what happened, I used to love it once. It sounds so sugary and sparkly to me now, to the point of overkill. I don't hate it or anything, I just never EVER reach for it these days.

Piece of Mind was my first Maiden album as well, like so many others. It's damn near a perfect album to get your feet wet, but once you're "in" you tend to latch onto something else. Took me a long time to get my head around Killers for some reason. I think it was because I wanted it to sound more like the debut, but it felt a little less acrobatic. Love it now though.

SiT is my favorite Maiden album, I don't have that experience with it whatsoever.

That sounds badass, have you thought about Purgatory or Prowler?

So uh... how do you guys order their 90's albums?

I haven't really thought about it much other than just a few minutes ago when the idea came to me. If I can find some multi-track stems of their songs, which probably won't be hard, I'll give it a go. I already remixed Slayer's "Raining Blood" in a similar fashion.

Yeah honestly the Dickinson stuff has aged very poorly for me. It's not that I think Powerslave is "bad" exactly, it's just like too much dessert or something. I'll listen to a few tracks and then go "oof, that's enough of that." The stuff I always liked less than Powerslave, like TNotB or PoM, I just never put on.

The DiAnno material though, that shit has aged like fine wine. Knowing far more about NWOBHM now than I did back when I first heard those two albums, it completely boggles my mind how far ahead of their peers Maiden were in terms of complexity. Right from the debut there is SO MUCH SHIT going on in every single song, it's nuts. Plus there's that real gritty edge to it, far more than any of the other "big" NWOBHM bands. You have to work your way down to Warfare or something to find a comparable level of grit. I really wish I could take a look into an alternate dimension where DiAnno never got kicked out and they just kept making albums like that until they all killed each other or something.