Hidden meanings behind the Iron Maiden cover art

[franksamuel0209]

When I first got into Iron Maiden back in 2005, a friend of mine told me that each Iron Maiden album cover art had a type of hidden message to indicate what number studio album it was for the band.

For example

Iron Maiden: There's only one person on the cover

Killers: There is Eddie and a hand below him. Also the ll in Killers is a Roman numeral II.

NotB: Eddie controlling the devil controlling the man. Three people. Also the B in Beast on the art isn't completed and looks like a #3.

Piece of Mind: I'm not quite sure, could be the cushions on the wall are in fours or the letter f of OF is different or the P in Piece is oddly drawn.

Powerslave: 5 heads on the pyramid

Somewhere in Time: The band (5) plus Eddie (1)

Seventh Son of a Seventh Son: Self Explanatory

NPFTD: 8 vowels including Y. Yeah I know, I'm reaching

FotD: I honestly don't know

X Factor: Roman numeral X is 10

Virtual XI: Roman numeral XI is 11

That's all I got. If anybody knows for sure it has had similar thoughts of the hidden meanings feel free to discuss. This riddle has puzzled me for 11 years now!

 

[Aces_High]

Maybe Riggs just stopped to hide numbers in the covers after Seventh Son. X is ok because you can see it both as the letter itself and the roman number, but including VIII or adding eight persons in the art is starting to be complicated.

 

[CriedWhenBrucieLeft]

What about all the cats?

 

[Black Bart]

FotD: I honestly don't know

Maybe there is no link because the illustrator had changed at that point (Derek Riggs > Melvyn Grant).

I liked to tell myself the same sort of stories about the covers, back in the day:
We are introduced to Eddie (IM) who gets more and more skillful and dangerous (K> NOTB ) but who ultimately gets caught (POM) and executed (PSl features a funeral monument). Then, he first resurrects (LAD) but is not fit to the time he lives in and gets killed (SiT: Eddie can be interpreted as the one who is killed -possibly by a futuristic clone- and whose hand we can see in the bottom right-hand corner of the front cover). SOASS presents us with Eddie in limbo, reconstructing his abilities, including that of regenerating himself (the foetus), which is followed by a second resurrection (NPFTD).

Here stops the canon visual Maiden sequence as far as LPs are concerned - ARLO, ARDO and BNW being later one-off Riggs creations.