CD Odyssey Disc 720: Iron Maiden

Welcome to the weekend! I could have reviewed this next album two days ago, but I wanted to prolong the listening experience.

Disc 720 is…. Powerslave

Artist: Iron Maiden

Year of Release: 1984

What’s up with the Cover? Bow down before the great and powerful Eddie! Once again Iron Maiden makes their album cover all about their giant zombie mascot. This time he is playing the role of Egyptian god-king. Entrance to the Temple of Eddie is in the crotch, which I guess makes sense for a heavy metal album.

How I Came To Know It: I grew up with this record. When it came out I was 14 and an avowed Iron Maiden fan. I liked this album so much I literally bought the shirt – one of those black band t-shirts with the three-quarter length white sleeves. I loved that shirt.

How It Stacks Up:  I have seven Iron Maiden albums and “Powerslave” is easily the best. Sorry “Number of the Beast” apologists.

Rating: 5 stars

Metal doesn’t get any better than this. Music in general rarely gets better than this. “Powerslave” is everything you want in a metal album; overflowing with visceral energy, stellar musicianship, soaring vocals and thoughtful and intelligent lyrics. I’ve known this album for over thirty years and it still hits me right in the temple entrance every time I hear it.

Musically, the band has never been better. The songs are grounded as ever in the masterful bass playing of Steve Harris. On the album’s instrumental (the appropriately titled “Losfer Words”) you can really hear him grooving it out down low, but every single song has great bass moments. Just train your ear to dive under the guitar and vocal onslaught and Harris (along with drummer Nicko McBrain) will be there, delivering fascinating and creative rhythms.

This in turn allows guitarists Dave Murray and Adrian Smith and vocalist Bruce Dickinson to do their thing. They soar over top of the groove with majesty and power. The guitar solos throughout “Powerslave” are top notch, displaying incredible skill and speed, but never sacrificing the structure of the song to tricks. Every solo is incredible, and on each listen I dig a different one. This time around I really enjoyed the guitar work on “The Duellists.”

Bruce Dickinson is one of rock and rolls great voices, and he is never better than on this record. On “Aces High” his singing climbs through the stratosphere even as the planes in the song duel it out in the Battle of Britain. Every time you think he can’t hit that next note he hits it and then throttles up another notch. Listening to it feels just like flying.

“Aces High” brings me to another reason I’ve always loved Maiden; they sing about awesome stuff. Long before it was cool to be a geek, Maiden was making history and fantasy cool for metal heads. “Powerslave” has a great run of crazy song topics, including:

·         The aforementioned Battle of Britain

·         The Cold War

·         Professional duelists – twice!

·         Pharaohs of ancient Egypt

·         Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

“2 Minutes to Midnight” is the Cold War offering; a brilliant and scathing indictment of how close we came in the mid-eighties to starting the Third World War. Five years before the Scorpions sang “Wind of Change” we were buried in the Cold War with no way out. “2 Minutes to Midnight” is full of millions starving, body bags and children torn in two. It is a hopeless tale from a hopeless time. In 1984 its raw power had you raising your fist and yelling, because that was the only way to release the tension.

Every song has its moments, but I would be remiss not to mention the last two tracks in particular, “Powerslave” and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

“Powerslave” is the tale of a pharaoh on his deathbed, realizing for the first time that for all his supposed godhood, he cannot forestall his own end. The language drips with dread and the tension born from a man who has absolute power in his hands, but is still a slave to time. Dickinson sets the stage over a surging guitar riff:

“Into the Abyss I’ll fall – the eye of Horus

Into the eyes of the night – watching me go.

Green is the cat’s eye that glows – in this temple

Enter the risen Osiris – risen again.”

I love the archaic use of the caesura in the verses, and when the song drops down to the chorus it is filled with minor chords and menace. Death is coming, and will leave you but a shadow that haunts the massive edifices you built that now celebrate your folly.

“Rime of the Ancient Mariner” may be the song that hooked me on poetry. Lyrically two sections of the song are lifted straight from the Coleridge poem, but for the most part it is a masterful summary of the original 625 line poem into a song just under 100. It does so without losing the tone, themes or emotional power of the original. My only quibble is they didn’t squeeze in my favourite line from the original, “Hold Off! Unhand me, gray-beard loon!”

“Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is not just a lyrical masterpiece, it is an epic metal song, that although almost 14 minutes long never loses its focus. It is like a miniature classical composition, filled with all the things – masterful bass, incredible guitar licks, and operatic vocals – that makes the whole album great. It could well be the greatest metal song ever written. It is definitely top five.

“Powerslave” follows 1982’s “Number of the Beast” and 1983’s “Piece of Mind.” Living up to either of those classic metal albums would have been a herculean task. “Powerslave” not only matches them both, it surpasses them.

Best tracks: all tracks