Your favourite 5 Maiden album opening tracks.....

Three favourite opening track from your five favourite albums?

I kid.

Let's actually discuss this seriously. What are you looking for in an opening track? If it sets the mood for the album, I think for me, it's gonna definitely be Aces High, The Wicker Man, If Eternity Shall Fail (what a cooking track!), but then it gets harder. Probably Moonchild, eh? And afterwards, I think I'd go with Sign of the Cross, which is a brooding dark masterpiece for an album that is also a brooding dark masterpiece.
 
1. Satellite 15... The Final Frontier

Absolutely love this track. From the spaced-out intro, to the straight forward hard rock song that is the second part this track has great atmosphere and fantastic lyrics.

2. Sign of the Cross

There has to be something special about a band who decides, in a time when their type of music is on a decline and they've hired a new and as of yet unproven singer - to not make an accessible, easy to digest opening track - but instead opens the album with one of their longest and weirdest songs to date. It's either insanity or brilliance. But the track itself, it delivers.

3. Caught Somewhere in Time

The perfect song to signal the new direction the album took the band in. A familiar epic in the style they'd done before, but still so much more sophisticated in terms of the sonic landscapes that were explored.

4. The Wicker Man

Maiden are back and they mean it. Maybe not a great song by itself (the chorus is slightly too repetitive), but perfect where it sits as the opening track of a comeback album. Fantastic production.

5. If Eternity Should Fail

Here is the soul of a man. Need I say more? Oh, I do - Nicko's drumming is the highlight to this one. Those verses...
 
Where Eagles Dare
Aces High
Moonchild
Sign of the Cross
If Eternity Should Fail
 
Aces High
Caught Somewhere in Time
The Wicker Man
Satellite 15... The Final Frontier
If Eternity Should Fail

Pretty confident about these choices. Two honorable mentions: Prowler and Sign of the Cross.
 
1 Where eagles dare
2 aces high
3 moonchild
4 caught somewhere in time
5 wildest dreams

All 5 are rocking jump starting cuts that kick the albums off in style. Perfect choices as opening songs to their respective albums!

Least favorites:

If eternity should fail. - never strikes me as an opener.. speed of light as the opener would have been way more effective IMO.

Satellite 15 final frontier: -final frontier itself would have been middle of the road on "openers list" but that loooooong boring intro just kills it for me. The song is cool though.
 
CSIT
Be quick or be dead
Moonchild
Aces High

CSIT should have been played on somewhere back in time tour. Especially when aces and moonchild where played on that and the maiden England tour. Maiden laziness again when it comes to rehearsing?
 
Let's actually discuss this seriously. What are you looking for in an opening track? If it sets the mood for the album, I think for me, it's gonna definitely be Aces High, The Wicker Man, If Eternity Shall Fail (what a cooking track!), but then it gets harder. Probably Moonchild, eh? And afterwards, I think I'd go with Sign of the Cross, which is a brooding dark masterpiece for an album that is also a brooding dark masterpiece.

I completely agree with your reasoning and your choices. Those would also be five and in that same order, too!

A good opening track shouldn't just be a great song, it should tell the listener what they're in for with the album either in mood or sound. All the ones you mentioned do that.
 
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