OPPapers.com

Powerslave

A heavy-metal band named after a medieval torture device sounds like a ready-made joke. But I've always had a soft spot for Iron Maiden. And it was 20 years ago today (to borrow a phrase) that Iron Maiden released its best album. I am referring, of course, to Powerslave.
When I was in the 9th grade, I listened to Powerslave so much I wore out the cassette. There was a lot to love: The crunching rhythms, the wailing guitars, the smart lyrics.
(Smart lyrics? Bet you weren't expecting that. A quick scan of Iron Maiden's album covers doesn't reveal many signs of intelligent life. Just about all of them feature a frizzy-haired zombie named Eddie, who looks like the artistic creation of a 16-year-old burnout with some inborn talent but little training and no sense of direction. The term "juvenilia" leaps to mind. And the titles don't help, either: Two of the band's first three albums are called Killers and The Number of the Beast. The crude appeals to dread and deviltry are a couple of the biggest heavy-metal clichés going. Everything about Iron Maiden appears patently ridiculous, at least on the surface.
It would be wrong to say that Iron Maiden was ill served by this packaging. After all, the band has experienced real commercial success in its native Britain, here in the United States, and around the world. A recent item on the group's website notes that Iron Maiden just sold its 500,000th album in Finland. That's not bad for a country of only five million people. (Can one in ten Finns possibly be wrong?)
In the loud and fast genre of heavy metal, Iron Maiden's music is tough to beat. Listening to the band for the first time after many years — I more or less had stopped by 1987 — I hear lots of strong riffs and melodies as well as impressive levels of musicianship. I don't play the guitar, but I've strummed one before and taking in a Maiden solo now makes me tip my hat to the guy who spent a lot of lonely hours perfecting his craft.
For me, however, what always...