The cover of A Matter of Life and Death

I love all of Iron Maiden's covers, since the very first Iron Maiden album.  But this time, though I liked it, Eddie is not anymore the central "thing" in the cover.  Now we see him very distant in the tank, and barely recognizable.

Metal_made,
I think you are right. Eddie on the Matter album cover is barely recognizable to some. The cover focuses only at the Crossed Guns symbol on the tank and the zombie soldiers on the foreground.

Whenever I look at the cover, I'm amazed at how such drawings fit the song. It kinda reminds me of These Colours Don't Run, as shown in the skeletal soldiers that mean they're risking death from the start. For me, These Colours Don't Run is the titular song for the album without a title song. Eddie can be described as central for me, since he's the tank commander, and cmon, there's two eddies, one being the eddie tank logo, so he's still central.

I think the album cover works great for the material which the album itself addresses. And, I mean, there are three Eddie's on it (the Eddie soldier, the crossed guns on the tank, and the crossed guns on the black flag).

The whole concept is brilliant.  Eddie stands so staunch; and he's barefoot unlike the other soldiers.  What could this represent? 

I wonder if the 6 skeletons represent the 6 members of Maiden?

Just for laughs.... I think we might have something going on here TrooperEd?  The one smoking a cig would have to be Adrian Smith. 

That and the one on the tank would have to be Steve.

I think it's a great cover. One of my favourites. I think they did a good job with how they handled Eddie. It's a more interesting concept than your average "on this album Eddie will look like THIS"-cover. What does bother me is the logo. It's a great idea, but I have yet to see a machine gun/fifle that has the clip mounted like that. It seems like they just painted an M16-esque weapon then moved the clip so that it doesn't disrupt the "joint".

Yes, I nitpick

Apart from that it's a great cover, though.

Shrike, please explain what you mean when you wrote...."on this album Eddie will look like THIS"-cover.
I'm confused.

Thank you.

Hehe, fair enough. I tried phrasing it a few different ways then gave up

What I meant was that many of the Iron Maiden covers aren't necessarily connected to the theme of the albums as much as they should be. The later covers have been better at fusing the art with the theme of the albums (though DoD is still a horrid cover ). I think the covers of Iron Maiden, Piece Of Mind, Seventh Son, No Prayer, Fear Of The Dark, X Factor and to a lesser extent SiT can be examples of albums where the cover (while great in their own right), don't necessarily fuse with the songs that are on the album. They end up being a showcase for "This year's Eddie" instead of conveying the feel of the album. And in some cases that's pretty self explanatory since very few Maiden-albums have as clear a theme as AMOLAD has. I mean, in most cases it's tied to the title track and nothing else, simply because the rest of the album isn't tied to a single concept. 

But since AMOLAD is heavily centred around war and conflict, it makes sense to have the cover be about war first, and Eddie second, so to speak.

I guess you're opinion on the older albums is formed because of AMOLAD, an album centered around one theme. Then it makes sense that the cover should be like that. Still the cover is not that imaginative, then.

Most previous albums had more variation in themes, so I find it a good thing that the older artworks are more challenging for the listener's imagination. Riggs left some room to think about.

With all the classic albums I've never had an idea, that the artwork didn't fit. It also depends what you mean with fusing. Besides a topic, an artwork can also depict a kind of atmosphere of an album. The tree of FOTD, the dark colours on TXF, all the references on the SIT cover and most other artworks fit very well imo.

Ever read more (explanations) about these artworks (e.g. interviews) of bandmembers and/or the artists themselves?

Interesting idea, except that there are only five skeletons.

There are 5 standing up and 1 lying down  (plus a dead body off to the right, some skeletal legs on the left and maybe another skeleton/body behind the skeleton standing to the left of the tank)

Hmm, that makes 9

If we say members, include past members who have recorded on albums, and then if we include Eddie on top of the tank to represent Steve Harris, but then we're back to the "there are only five skeletons" argument.

I really must find more to do at work than read message boards.

I have read some explanations, and I can appreciate that there are references and what not. And I realise that a lot of effort is put into the covers. But I still think there's a disconnect. Maybe it's because it's more subtle in the older albums. But I see a better connection between the covers of Brave New World (both with the title track and the place the band was in at the time), Dance of Death (in a literal sense) and AMOLAD.  As for the X Factor I didn't mention it because it's one of the covers I think really fits the album, so I agree on that.

I know that the covers are a source of great enjoyment for many Maiden-fans, so I'm not going to argue. But I do think that the later covers have been more fitting for the albums than the earlier ones. In part obviously because many of the later albums have been more theme oriented. X Factor was dark and introspective, BNW was grandiose and optimistic, DoD was "weird" and experimenting, AMOLAD was war-themed. And so on. I think it's a natural evolution.

You did!

For the rest I understand your point.

Shrike, thanks for clearing up the confusion.  I do agree with you about the cover of dance of death being horrible!  However, the inside of DOD is really cool though, and so I guess you can't always judge a book by its cover.

What I was referring to are the 5 skeletons that are wearing uniforms and obviously "undead" as they are in a lifelike state ie: walking, smoking a cig, etc....  Number 6 would still be Eddie on top (who could be Steve, as he's been there since the beginning.....like Eddie. correct?)  just my view, that's all.  The artist could've just done a random pic with corpses going to war and they are already dead, before they die.  The thing that gets me though, is they used the tank in the tour last year and all 6 of them we're there.  

Oops My bad there