#54 - Iron Maiden

While there were several terrific bands during the genre's emergence from the primordial ooze of the early 70s, heavy metal music never really reached mainstream popularity until the movement known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) took off right around the beginning of the 1980s.  Just as English metal stalwarts Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple were petering out, new bands like Saxon, Girlschool, Venom, Angel Witch, Motörhead and Def Leppard rejuvenated the metal sound and introduced it to a new and much wider audience.  Probably the most successful (and deservedly so) NWOBHM band both in the movement's heyday and over the subsequent years has been Iron Maiden.  After generating some underground buzz in the late 70s, they leapt to prominence with their charting eponymous debut in 1980.  As great as that, and their follow-up album Killers were, Maiden took an even larger step into the limelight in 1983 with their third album, The Number of the Beast, featuring new frontman Bruce Dickinson and never looked back.

As was true for a lot of people, the NWOBHM era was when I started listening to music in general and metal in specific: 1983 to be exact, which happened to be the year that Iron Maiden hit their stride.  If I'm honest, I've got to confess that I now actually prefer their first two albums, which featured vocalist Paul Di'Anno, and really established bassist and main composer Steve Harris' writing style and the band's up-tempo, galloping, punk-inspired metal sound.  They're start-to-finish terrific albums both and still stand as two of my favorite early-80s albums.  That said, there are a couple of songs on The Number of the Beast that were just jaw-dropping at the time.  The vocals were unlike anything I had heard to date and the sheer epic-ness the combination of sound and lyrics conjured seriously moved this pre-adolescent boy.  One of these was the album closer "Hallowed Be Thy Name", clocking in at a meaty 7+ minutes of pure sonic power.  The other was the title track which, while a more radio-friendly sub-5-minute song, still had similar epic qualities: the somber spoken biblical quote from Revelation, the gradual crescendo and interesting and unusual 10-beat phrases of the opening to the blood-curdling scream at the end of the intro, the characteristic galloping beat, the progression of melodic sections and they way they lead to one another, the impressive on-the-edge instrumental work - especially the bass work and guitar solos, and of course Dickinson's iconic vocals combine to rightfully make this one of the most well-loved metal songs in history.