By Avinash Mittur
It’s been thirty years since Iron Maiden walloped the world with their fourth studio record, Piece of Mind. With the album that came before, The Number of the Beast, the band had to prove to the world that they could still record great material with their new singer, one Mr. Bruce Dickinson. Well as we all know, they went and shattered the expectations of every Maiden fan back then. In 1983 though, the band had to show the world that The Number of the Beast was no fluke. With new drummer Nicko McBrain in tow, Iron Maiden did just that with Piece of Mind, a forty five minute monolith of smoldering heavy metal.
Iron Maiden sure loved to keep fans worried back in those days it seems. With every album came another change in the lineup, and Piece of Mind was no different. The late Clive Burr, an excellent and driving drummer in his own right, had left the band the year before and was replaced by the equally astounding Nicko McBrain. McBrain immediately let the world now what a killer percussionist he is with his iconic intro to ‘Where Eagles Dare’. The six bludgeoning minutes from this track alone should have been enough to dispel any fears that fans had about the new lineup, but the album would only get better and better. ‘Revelations’ was a grand epic that hinted at the quiet-loud dynamics that Maiden would employ again and again in later years, while the marching ‘Flight of Icarus’ saw Dickinson going Greek mythological on his new fans. ‘Flight of Icarus’ was later given a blistering reading on Live After Death– that version is definitive in this reviewer’s opinion.
After the fun headbanging romp of ‘Die With Your Boots On’, Maiden went and redefined heavy metal music forever with ‘The Trooper’. Sure, they had already given the world the galloping rhythm, and harmonies, dueling guitar solos and soaring vocals were nothing new by 1983, but ‘The Trooper’ took all those elements and assembled them into the perfect heavy metal song. Tony Iommi’s riffs, Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing’s harmonies and trade-off leads, Ian Gillan’s hair-raising screams and of course, Steve Harris’ one of a kind clanking bass were finally brought to their inevitable meeting place. The result was one of the greatest heavy metal songs ever written, and an eternal reference point for the genre. This track brought an end to Iron Maiden’s best album side ever. Seriously, after the quintuple threat of ‘Eagles’, ‘Icarus’, ‘Revelations’, ‘Boots’, and ‘Trooper’, the kids must have had their jaws on the floor in 1983. If I were them, I probably wouldn’t have even bothered to flip the record and just played side one over and over again.
Fortunately though, side two yielded plenty of great rewards, though it didn’t match the relentless onslaught of side one. After a silly backwards message from McBrain, ‘Still Life’ opens things up with another high flying chorus from Dickinson. Unfortunately, Iron Maiden offers the lamest track out of their fabled golden era afterwards. The music for ‘Quest for Fire’ is cool enough, but any song whose first words are ‘In a time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth!’ is bound to be a bit too silly. Lucky for us though, the band save themselves with the frenetic borderline-thrash of ‘Sun and Steel’ and the towering sci-fi epic, ‘To Tame a Land’.
Piece of Mind should ultimately be remembered as one of Iron Maiden’s most consistently brilliant works. They reached higher individual moments both before and after 1983, but no other Maiden album offers a non-stop pounding of top grade heavy metal like this one does. Maiden were aiming for the throat with this album, and frankly they hit the bullseye. Yes, the band became more progressive in later years and their early works had a bit of a punk attitude, but Iron Maiden were never more brazenly metal than on Piece of Mind. Essential listening for every fan of the genre.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmK4LLsgsfI