Iron Maiden- Iron Maiden

Now I'm going to continue my metal history chronicles through the decades. Mostly we have done late 60's up to '71.

So today Ima cover my favorite purely metal band, IRON MAIDEN. We will be covering their first album named Iron Maiden this is an album released in 1980 but the band formed in 1975 with some issues resulting in the release of the first album. The album starts with a bang and is explosive and amazing. It has an almost sing-a-long quality too it (The Prowler) that is. In fact it right away shows the amazingness of Iron Maiden who invented what I call the Heavy Metal Sing-A-Long, Notable songs in this thing of sing-a-long metal include Brave New World and Mother of Mercy.

The songs are powerful and hard and some true classics are on this album. They are unbelievably hard for the era and the vocals and guitar support each other. Di'Anno is my second favorite Maiden lead singer to Dickinson. Di'Anno has a great voice for a metal album Harris is of course a fantastic bassist as he has always been. Dave Murray rips out some REALLY impressive solos. He set the tone for every Maiden song having a solo and all of them being amazing and powerful. The drum work done on this album by Clive Burr is at a high level, not fantastic like Bonham or Moon or even my favorite Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain but still really good powerful drumming.

The lyrics are dark, raunchy, loud, balladish and sweaty. Basically they set the tone for Iron Maiden albums to come. I love Maiden's loud and powerful lyrics. This album comes off really well and I really think it comes off well. There are lots of powerful riffs especially in Running Free. There are a lot of classics on this album, these include Phantom of the Opera, Iron Maiden, and Running Free. While those songs are not the best of the Maiden songs these are still pretty good. This is a classy album for lack of a better word. It set the tone for years of metal to come, and is really a staple in the history of metal. Another note about this album is that in the songs Strange World and Phantom of the Opera birth the Maiden styled awesome rock ballad.

Overall this album rocks pretty hard. It comes off pretty well and shows a lot of technical skill. I like it and I think most metalheads would like it quite a bit. There is a lot of range here and a lot of skill and brilliant lyrics but you can definitely tell the band is young. The production quality is.. ok but not great. Even Harris doesn't like the production on this album. The remasters sound a lot better. Overall a great album but one that shows room for improvement

OVERALL 8.5/10

Iron Maiden