Best 1-2 opening salvo on a Maiden album?

Favorite 1-2 punch on a Maiden album?

  • Prowler / Remember Tomorrow

  • The Ides of March / Wrathchild

  • Invaders / Children of the Damned

  • Where Eagles Dare / Revelations

  • Aces High / 2 Minutes to Midnight

  • Caught Somewhere in Time / Wasted Years

  • Moonchild / Infinite Dreams

  • Tailgunner / Holy Smoke

  • Be Quick or Be Dead / From Here to Eternity

  • Sign of the Cross / Lord of the Flies

  • Futureal / The Angel and the Gambler

  • The Wicker Man / Ghost of the Navigator

  • Wildest Dreams / Rainmaker

  • Different World / These Colours Don't Run

  • Satellite 15... The Final Frontier / El Dorado

Results are only viewable after voting.
Perun said:
As with anything Maiden, there's The X Factor, and then there's the rest.
Click to expand...

I can accept that Sign of the Cross is a brave, brooding opener and up there with the best first songs, but Lord of the Flies?! I'd love to hear you tell me how that is a better song than Revelations, 2 Minutes, Wasted Years, Infinite Dreams or Ghost of the Navigator, all of which are also paired with pretty awesome openers.
 
Ariana said:
The X Factor is not one of these albums that needs an upbeat, uplifting song as an opener. That's just not what the album is about. In fact, I find Man on the Edge the weakest song on the album and it feels out of place to me. Sign of the Cross is much more suitable as an opener, as it sets the pace wonderfully for the rest of the album and gets you into its dark atmosphere right from the start.
Click to expand...

Man On The Edge to me is a lot like Different World. It's a solid song that whilst one of the more upbeat songs on the album, still conveys a thought provoking message.

Sign is a song that would be much better suited as a closer, compiling a range of emotions and speeds to make a diverse song. Putting it at the beginning is like putting Wild Wind or Rime at the start; they're still good songs but it's not a song really crafted to be an opening song, and would be much more suitable near the end to round off the listener's experience.
 
I understand what you're saying, but I still think that TXF is not the average Maiden album and the desicion to open with Sign was well justified.
 
RTC said:
Sign is a song that would be much better suited as a closer, compiling a range of emotions and speeds to make a diverse song. Putting it at the beginning is like putting Wild Wind or Rime at the start; they're still good songs but it's not a song really crafted to be an opening song, and would be much more suitable near the end to round off the listener's experience.
Click to expand...

But The X Factor already has a perfect closer - The Unbeliever. This song can't be put anywhere but the end of the album. The band's decision to open the album with an epic was ballsy, but I think it perfectly introduces it. It's precisely not "just" an epic like Rime or Wild Wind, because it works much differently. It has a strongly composed beginning that mounts tension in a way you expect something big to follow. This effect works both for the song itself, and for the album that follows it. If this tension were released only in the song and there was nothing to follow up on that, especially because Sign ends in a similar way as it starts, I'd feel quite cheated to be honest.
You see, Rime has a certain fading element to its end. It produces closure. The same goes for To Tame a Land and Alexander the Great. I can't help but think these songs were meant to be followed by silence. Wild Wind is similar although it ends the same way as it starts, because it tells a progressing story that gets closure in the end. Sign is different. It ends on a brooding note as it began, as if the questions raised throughout the song - both lyrically and musically - remain open, to be answered by the rest of the album.

2Mins said:
I can accept that Sign of the Cross is a brave, brooding opener and up there with the best first songs, but Lord of the Flies?! I'd love to hear you tell me how that is a better song than Revelations, 2 Minutes, Wasted Years, Infinite Dreams or Ghost of the Navigator, all of which are also paired with pretty awesome openers.
Click to expand...

It is definitely better than 2 Minutes and Wasted Years in my opinion, and at least on par with the rest. It has what is probably my favourite intro to all Maiden songs and maintains a brooding, dramatic tension to it throughout the song despite being fast paced and rocking. It's opening is a perfect reply to Sign's ending and helps to transfer the mood set by Sign to a different level. It was also a stylistically unique song in the Maiden catalogue until they re-recorded it as Gates of Tomorrow.
 
Perun said:
It is definitely better than 2 Minutes and Wasted Years in my opinion, and at least on par with the rest. It has what is probably my favourite intro to all Maiden songs and maintains a brooding, dramatic tension to it throughout the song despite being fast paced and rocking. It's opening is a perfect reply to Sign's ending and helps to transfer the mood set by Sign to a different level. It was also a stylistically unique song in the Maiden catalogue until they re-recorded it as Gates of Tomorrow.
Click to expand...

I'll agree it takes off where Sign finishes. But, imo, where 2 Minutes and Wasted Years have drive, Lord plods along. Where 2 Minutes has a nice structure, complexity and variety without getting lost in itself, Lord has a one riff and an uninteresting chord structure. 2 Minutes also has that vibrato on the intro riff, which lifts it above similar riffs from the start. Wasted Years has a delicate intro/mid/end riff, and great pop sensibility. And they both have Bruce's yearning, soaring vocals. And that's not getting started on Revelations, ID, GotN.
 
Perun said:
But The X Factor already has a perfect closer - The Unbeliever. This song can't be put anywhere but the end of the album. The band's decision to open the album with an epic was ballsy, but I think it perfectly introduces it. It's precisely not "just" an epic like Rime or Wild Wind, because it works much differently. It has a strongly composed beginning that mounts tension in a way you expect something big to follow. This effect works both for the song itself, and for the album that follows it. If this tension were released only in the song and there was nothing to follow up on that, especially because Sign ends in a similar way as it starts, I'd feel quite cheated to be honest.
You see, Rime has a certain fading element to its end. It produces closure. The same goes for To Tame a Land and Alexander the Great. I can't help but think these songs were meant to be followed by silence. Wild Wind is similar although it ends the same way as it starts, because it tells a progressing story that gets closure in the end. Sign is different. It ends on a brooding note as it began, as if the questions raised throughout the song - both lyrically and musically - remain open, to be answered by the rest of the album.
Click to expand...

If we're speaking philosophically, aren't the best questions the ones that aren't answered and left open to interpretation? If the answers are spelt out for us instead of leaving it for us to judge, I'd feel somewhat cheated too, even if the answers proposed do match mine. Sign does end in a similar brooding fashion that it possessed in its first couple of minutes...very much like Wild Wind with its tranquil wind. It doesn't produce the same kind of closure that those songs do, but it does something else those songs do: It gives the listener an experience and a final journey after having listened to various other musical pieces and journeys. By taking them on this journey too early, it almost feels like a trump card has been played too early.

I think the justification for Sign being at the start of the album was probably one made by Harris himself. He knew Blaze would be met with colder reception than Bruce due to their different vocal styles and therefore placed the best song at the beginning in order to wow people listening to Blaze in Maiden for the first time. And I can understand that, Sign being most people's favourite song on the album (mine too), but it's not like Bruce had an excellent debut with Invaders. But what he did have is an excellent ending to his first album (Hallowed).
 
Back then, most people heard Maiden one week before the album came out, namely on the first single Man on the Edge. I heard (and saw!) him first when the videoclip came on MTV's Headbanger's Ball. Didn't like the singing much but when TXF came out I got more positive. He fits the dark material very well.
 
A few observations...

Like Stardust, I'm shocked at the lack of votes for Ides/Wrathchild. It's a classic combo. I'm equally shocked that FotD got a vote. Yes I like those openers, but I didn't expect anyone else to agree. :p

I'm also shocked that NotB hasn't gotten a single vote. Invaders isn't that bad, folks. I think it's actually quite good. Seriously, Sat 15 / El Dorado is better than Invaders / CotD??

Here's the problem with Sign of the Cross: it's such an unconventional epic that it immediately takes the listener out of the comfort zone. Both the intro and the middle instrumental are radically unlike any Maiden ever heard before. Add a new singer and it's possibly too much new stuff at once for some people. Most people seem to like their openers to be comfortable verse-chorus numbers like Aces High or Wicker Man. Man on the Edge would have been the "safe" opener, so at least Maiden gets points for guts.
 
I agree with Dusty too. While it didn't vote for it myself, it barely missed it for me.

As for NOTB, Invaders is a really cool song but it isn't a strong way to start the album.
RTC said:
I think the justification for Sign being at the start of the album was probably one made by Harris himself. He knew Blaze would be met with colder reception than Bruce due to their different vocal styles and therefore placed the best song at the beginning in order to wow people listening to Blaze in Maiden for the first time. And I can understand that, Sign being most people's favourite song on the album (mine too), but it's not like Bruce had an excellent debut with Invaders. But what he did have is an excellent ending to his first album (Hallowed).
Click to expand...
If that was his goal he would've put a more accessible/catchier song at the start. I think putting the epic first signifies that the band is not worried about selling Blaze/the new sound to fans and that they're making the album they want. Whether or not people like it isn't as important.
 
I love both Invaders and Children of the Damned but they don't really work well (or bad) in succession. Nothing spectacular, or spectacularly bad either. Maiden should have opened that album with the title track IMO.

Love Sign of The Cross, but Lord of The Flies is "just good", even if Lord of The Flies was one of my faves on the Dance of Death tour. Perhaps Man on The Edge after Sign would have worked better.

Vote goes to Wicker man followed by Ghost of The Navigator. Maiden hadn't written a better short song in Wicker Man for years and Ghost of The Navigator showed that Maiden with Bruce at the helm could rejuvenate the traditional Maiden epic while pushing them into the 2000's...
 
I think both discs of The Book Of Souls have an excellent 1-2 Punch to them. Eternity into Speed is absolutely classic.
 
  • Like
Reactions: RTC
I voted Powerslave. It was a difficult choice, and it faces stiff competition from a few of the other albums, but I think the AH/2MTM combo has the edge.
 
Aces and 2MTM

The songs on SiT maybe better but as for opening an album, these two work perfectly.
 
Powerslave and Seventh Son.

Powerslave because Aces High is Maidens best opener. Fast, energetic, great sing-along chorus, great solos.. And then 2 Minutes, riff-driven, Adrian and Bruce on top of their games. Terrific songs And live it's even better! It was pure magic in 2008. Open with those two, you get the audiences attention.

Moonchild and Infinite Dreams are different. Maybe not as good openers as Aces/2MTM, but probably better songs. Infinite Dreams is top five all time for me, and Moonchild sets the mood perfectly.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top