Their three most recent albums - The Final Frontier (2010), The Book of Souls (2015), and Senjutsu (2021) - have all reached No. 1 in more than 20 countries. Īfter some turbulence in the 1990s, the return of lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith in 1999 saw the band undergo a resurgence in popularity, with a series of new albums and highly successful tours. The Number of the Beast is among the most popular heavy metal albums of all time, having sold almost 20 million copies worldwide. The addition of Dickinson was a turning point in their career, establishing them as one of heavy metal's most important bands. As pioneers of the new wave of British heavy metal movement, Iron Maiden released a series of UK and US Platinum and Gold albums, including 1980's debut album, 1981's Killers, and 1982's The Number of the Beast – its first album with Bruce Dickinson, who replaced Paul Di'Anno as lead singer. Although fluid in the early years of the band, the line-up for most of the band's history has consisted of Harris, lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson, drummer Nicko McBrain, and guitarists Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers. It was up to me to interpret it.Iron Maiden are an English heavy metal band formed in Leyton, East London, in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. There were kabuki masks and tattoos, Japanese water dragon. Artist Mark Wilkinson told us that Steve Harris emailed him pages of imagery for reference: “There were samurai warriors and creatures from Japanese oni mythology - ogres with one or more horns growing out of their heads, plus an extra set of fangs. Maintaining the stark black backdrop from The Book Of Souls - with an expression and posture echoing Killers, where TBOS echoed the debut sleeve - our hero manifests in terrifying Samurai form, ready to captivate a new generation of wide-eyed youth. With an extra pair of fangs poking through bloody gums, battered metallic battledress, copious bloodstaining and an arsenal of weaponry at hand, Senjutsu is Eddie at his most flat-out bloodthirsty, shit-scary. No wonder the box set also included a seventeen-inch poster of the image. However, in the Senjutsu Super Deluxe edition, the Blu-Ray cover of the epic Writing On The Wall animated video adds a giant Samurai Eddie flashing his great big sword, as well as the rest of the Biker Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There are few more metal images than the Grim Reaper on a motorbike surrounded by flying eagles. Bursting through a copy of the Mirror carrying the tragic news of the R101 disaster (the subject of the song), Eddie reaches to grab the stricken airship out of the clouds, as the vast shadow of long-time Maiden sleeve art cameo the Grim Reaper surveys his grim handiwork. His mane of neon green fibre-optic hair is pretty fetching, too.Įddie’s first head-and-shoulders cover portrait since 1980, Mark Wilkinson’s Mayan Ed for The Book Of Souls is a focused triumph, our tribal-scarred hero peering out of a jet-black background, leaving behind the cluttered tableaux of recent years to reassert the snarling menace and attitude that first made us fall in love with the mad old bastard.įor a limited Record Store Day picture disc gatefold, Maiden turned to Hervé Monjeaud, the French artist who redesigned Derek Riggs’ Maiden England video sleeve for its 2013 DVD reissue, for the Empire Of The Clouds release. Being sucked into a computer universe seemingly works wonders on our hero’s teeth, displaying a straighter and whiter set of gnashers here than we've ever seen in Eddie's 'ead before. For Speed Of Light, the first single from Maiden's sixteenth studio album, Eddie was reimagined as a digi-hopping game invader, popping up in all manner of classic era video game archetypes as he battled his way through til the bitter end.
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