Your bottom 5 Iron Maiden albums

MindRuler

MindRuler

Ancient Mariner
Which are your 5 least favourite Maiden albums? From top to bottom where the top is my favourite of the 5:

Killers
Iron Maiden
Dance Of Death
Fear Of The Dark
The Book.Of Souls

Interesting to see all Di´Anno albums are there, none of the maligned Blaze ones and 2 reunion ones.
Beware! Not that I dislike these because on all of the albums are great songs!
 
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13. Piece Of Mind
14. The Number Of The Beast
15. The Final Frontier
16. Iron Maiden
17. Killers

To explain a bit: For the most part I think Maiden got better and better in the 80s from album to album. Almost every record being better than its predecessor, with SSOASS being one of their best albums in the discography. I also vastly prefer the 90s and reunion material to the 80s stuff, so that explains why 4 of the "golden era" albums are in my list.

The Di Anno stuff is at the bottom because, while they are still great albums, I don't really care for that style of songs. That's not what I'm looking for when I wanna listen to Maiden.
TNOTB and POM are a bit similar in that regard. They started transitioning to the darker sound I prefer, but are still quite far from what I'm looking for. Also, not the biggest fan of Bruce's air raid siren days. I enjoy his post-Skunkworks voice much more.
TFF is the outlier here. It's still a great album, but by far my least favorite reunion album and the first (and so far only) time I've been actually disappointed by a new studio release by Maiden. It has some great highs (Starblind!) but man do the lows drag it down.
 
Vaenyr said:
[...]
13. Piece Of Mind
14. The Number Of The Beast
15. The Final Frontier
16. Iron Maiden
17. Killers

To explain a bit: For the most part I think Maiden got better and better in the 80s from album to album. Almost every record being better than its predecessor, with SSOASS being one of their best albums in the discography. I also vastly prefer the 90s and reunion material to the 80s stuff, so that explains why 4 of the "golden era" albums are in my list.

The Di Anno stuff is at the bottom because, while they are still great albums geometry vibes. I don't really care for that style of songs. That's not what I'm looking for when I wanna listen to Maiden.
TNOTB and POM are a bit similar in that regard. They started transitioning to the darker sound I prefer, but are still quite far from what I'm looking for. Also, not the biggest fan of Bruce's air raid siren days. I enjoy his post-Skunkworks voice much more.
TFF is the outlier here. It's still a great album, but by far my least favorite reunion album and the first (and so far only) time I've been actually disappointed by a new studio release by Maiden. It has some great highs (Starblind!) but man do the lows drag it down.
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Thank you so much. Great!
 
All maiden albums are great, but like James Bond movies, some are lesser representations of their type...

Agree with Vaneyr the earliest stuff is a foundation stone for what came later. And I prefer what Maiden became as the 80s went on.

13. The Number Of The Beast
14. Virtual XI
15. Fear of the Dark
16. Killers
17. No Prayer for the Dying
 
First four are easy:

Killers
No Prayer For the Dying
Dance of Death
Fear of the Dark

Last one is hard, but I guess that recency biases will have me saying A Matter of Life and Death
 
Based on my ranking (https://forum.maidenfans.com/threads/rate-all-17-maiden-albums-best-to-worst.71967/post-1094837), this would be the bottom 5:

13 Killers - More like Fillers to me.
14 Fear Of The Dark - It would have been a superb EP.
15 The X Factor - Overlong, filled with plodding and lumbering songs, and very poorly produced.
16 No Prayer for the Dying - Some good songs and a good amount of crap thrown in for good measure. A failed attempt to recapture the feel of album #13 above.
17 Virtual XI - A turd. Definitely, the definition of bottom (of the stinky variety).

Senjutsu might end up replacing Killers though.
 
13. The Book of Souls
14. Iron Maiden
15. No Prayer For the Dying
16. Fear of the Dark
17. Virtual XI

The bottom three is easy, although the order could vary a bit. But I think every Maiden album has some good songs and great moments. Virtual XI is probably the one with most uninspiring songs.

The debut is there simply because of the sound. Song material is good. The last one is The Book of Souls, but at this point it doesn't matter because all the albums are very good or better.
 
It's pretty easy for me:

Fear of the Dark
The X Factor
The Final Frontier
Virtual XI
No Prayer

maybe the order changes, they are all pretty close to each other. I hate both 90s versions of Maiden and then TFF is as bloated as it could be. The Book of Souls is even more bloated but it's not in my bottom 5, because it has some pretty enjoyable songs in there.
 
Well bottom for Maiden but top overall....here it is

Virtual XI
The Final Frontier
Fear Of The Dark
No Prayer For The Dying
Senjutsu
 
13. Senjutsu - some great songs, but the title track, Darkest Hour, and Celts drag it down
14. The Final Frontier - good album, but the pacing is a little off
15. The X Factor - some great songs, but too many similar long intros
16. Iron Maiden - the production isn’t so good, and I’m not really a fan of Paul
17. Killers - as @GhostofCain said, Fillers! :D
 
13. The X Factor
14. Senjutsu
15. Virtual XI
16. The Final Frontier
17. No Prayer For The Dying

If you are struggling/forcing yourself to like something, it isn't just worth it. Both the Blaze albums suffer from dull production. While I do enjoy some songs from The X Factor, those songs aren't the first thing when I want to remember about the band and it took me time to get into them. On the other hand, Virtual XI though having some interesting parts here and there, has odd songs overall. Again, I do like many songs from Senjutsu but as they say, "first impression is the last impression". The Final Frontier and NPFTD having totally different formulas, are both at the odd ends. TFF having some interesting elements, yet has some weird/odd songs and NPFTD sits out of place in the discography as if the band is holding back from making awesome music. Though I wil say, I need to give more time to both these albums.
 
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