Blog Archives

PIECE OF MIND

30/6/2016

I’m not ashamed to admit that I bought ‘Live After Death’ years before I finally invested in ‘Piece of Mind’.

SUMMER OF MAIDEN - PIECE OF MIND
Andrew Freudenberg

I suppose the first time that I heard Iron Maiden was when ‘Run to the Hills’ stormed into the charts back in 1982. Back then, the appearance of anything resembling heavy metal on the radio or, God forbid, the TV, was a rare occurrence. While rock radio thrived in the U.S we were awash with New Romantics and 2 Tone. When Saxon, Motorhead or Gillan gave us a glimpse of the good stuff on Top of the Pops, we thanked the metal Gods and waited patiently for months until our next allowance. Tommy Vance got two or three hours a week on Radio 1 to assuage our thirst, and the unmentionable Jonathon King had a television show, Entertainment USA, seemingly designed to annoy us with how much better our transatlantic cousins had it music wise. It’s all right though, you needn’t weep for us, we still had the vinyl and cassettes, and you didn’t yet need a mortgage to buy gig tickets, so it wasn’t all bad news.

The Number of the Beast

24/6/2016

SUMMER OF MAIDEN'S MAIDEN VOYAGE VOLUME 1

Maiden Voyage is a series companion articles to our Summer of Maiden extravaganza. Where Iron Maiden Virgins listen to and review an Iron Maiden album. Today it is the turn of Kerry Lipp as he tackles the monster that is The Number of the Beast

Coming at this as a complete maiden, if I were forced to pick a word to describe the band Iron Maiden, I’d call them iconic. Before I got involved in this project, I could name exactly two Iron Maiden songs: Run to the Hills and The Trooper, but even then, I wouldn’t have recognized them if I heard them. I just knew those were two of the band’s biggest songs. But, having said that, I’ve always known who they are, could recognize an album cover of theirs from a mile away. That’s pretty cool.

\m/ BIRTH OF THE BEAST \m/

23/6/2016

The Number of the Beast has weathered time, protesters hammers, and passing trends in the metal genre to still be one of the best albums of all time and is hailed as a cornerstone of heavy metal.

The Number of the Beast was released, or should I say unleashed upon the world on March 22, 1982. It was the third studio album by the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden. It was the last record that included drummer Clive Burr and the first with Bruce Dickinson, whose vocal abilities were more suited for the territories in which the band wanted to go. It was a landmark record for the band, receiving both acclaim for their musicianship but also controversy from those religious freaks that believed the music and artwork to be satanic. Since its release and subsequent tour “The Beast” has become a nickname for the band, named after their first number one record in the UK album charts and also describing their ferocity on stage.

THE PUNK AND THE MAIDEN: KILLERS BY STEVE BYRNE

15/6/2016

"there’s an authenticity to the guitar here, something down to earth about Murray and Smith’s duelling and cooperating fretwork"

Music is a strange beast. Promiscuous, sometimes incestuous. Influences pass back and forth like DNA, causing constant mutations. Iron Maiden are often credited with blending the immediacy of punk with the riffs of metal to create their sound.

In 1981, I was an adolescent punk rocker. The initial popularity of punk had waned, and, locally, there weren’t many of us left. Therefore, the majority of my friends and social circle were culled from that other group of outsiders—the rockers (the term metalhead was still a good few years coming).

Being a punk kid meant I painted my own jackets, printed my own t-shirts and otherwise customised my own clothes. My rocker mates had to get their mums or sisters to embroider their denims, or sew on back patches. They soon tired of this uniformity (and lack of cool). As the owner of the printing ink, fabric paint, acrylics and enamels, I became the go-to guy for daubing album artwork onto denim and leather.

And that’s how I was introduced to Killers.....

SUMMER OF MAIDEN: IRON MAIDEN: IRON MAIDEN BY ADAM NEVILL

9/6/2016

If they'd only released this one album, they'd have been legends, and that is a true test of a band's legacy.

It's one of those albums that featured prominently at the very beginning of my passion for intense, heavy music. The record had a big impact upon my fourteen year old mind, and influenced my future taste in music.

I first encountered the record back in 1984. As a new arrival in Birmingham, having just emigrated from New Zealand, with a suntan and funny voice that others continually imitated (even the teachers), I was an odd, even exotic creature in the West Midlands. The experience of being friendless and starting at a new school did nothing to allay my innate capacity for misanthropy, with thoughts already settling on the dark-side of the spectrum. But confirmation and escape was at hand. One of the first mates that I made at school loaned me his 'Axe Attack' cassette (Ktel). I'd only ever heard three heavy metal songs before this time - 'I Was Made for Loving You' by Kiss, 'Smoke on the Water' (Deep Purple) and 'The Wolf of the Red Roses' (Meatloaf). At the time I hadn't known who'd recorded the last two songs. My rocker friend cleared up the mystery and began my metal conversion by loaning 'Axe Attack' to me. A passion that has lasted to this day was created by that very cassette. It's a great compilation, but my favourite song quickly became 'Running Free' by Iron Maiden. I bought their first album on cassette from Revolver Records on Birmingham New Street (later becoming HMV). This was 1984, so Killers, Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind and Poweslave were already out, but I started at ground zero.