MAIDEN GRAPHICS ???

[cybermodo]

This came frome some "National Review Online"...

John J. Miller
September 15, 2004, 6:15 a.m.
Powerslave!
My favorite heavy-metal album.



A heavy-metal band named after a medieval torture device sounds like a ready-made joke. But I've always had a soft spot for Iron Maiden. And it was 20 years ago today (to borrow a phrase) that Iron Maiden released its best album. I am referring, of course, to Powerslave.

When I was in the 9th grade, I listened to Powerslave so much I wore out the cassette. There was a lot to love: The crunching rhythms, the wailing guitars, the smart lyrics.

Smart lyrics? Bet you weren't expecting that. A quick scan of Iron Maiden's album covers doesn't reveal many signs of intelligent life. Just about all of them feature a frizzy-haired zombie named Eddie, who looks like the artistic creation of a 16-year-old burnout with some inborn talent but little training and no sense of direction. The term "juvenilia" leaps to mind. And the titles don't help, either: Two of the band's first three albums are called Killers and The Number of the Beast. The crude appeals to dread and deviltry are a couple of the biggest heavy-metal clichés going. Everything about Iron Maiden appears patently ridiculous, at least on the surface.

It would be wrong to say that Iron Maiden was ill served by this packaging. After all, the band has experienced real commercial success in its native Britain, here in the United States, and around the world. A recent item on the group's website notes that Iron Maiden just sold its 500,000th album in Finland. That's not bad for a country of only five million people. (Can one in ten Finns possibly be wrong?)

In the loud and fast genre of heavy metal, Iron Maiden's music is tough to beat. Listening to the band for the first time after many years — I more or less had stopped by 1987 — I hear lots of strong riffs and melodies as well as impressive levels of musicianship. I don't play the guitar, but I've strummed one before and taking in a Maiden solo now makes me tip my hat to the guy who spent a lot of lonely hours perfecting his craft...

---

I had to post that quote cause it realy makes a point!

I went into MAIDEN 2 years ago, when I was 30 years old! Back in the eightees (end of it) I was a teenager who based his musical impressions on RAMONES, BAD RELIGION, NO FX, punk in general... I was no fan of metal, precisely because of that gloom, morbid and depressive attitude they represented, and specialy the covers and whole iconography of the movement looked to me as a commercial crap for brainwashed kids. (sorry for this, that was long time ago)

Yes, I heard few songs from Maiden back then ("Aces High", for instance) and it blew me away, but seeing covers and  having a glance on a show where some stupid monster doll is jumping around the scene ... it looked SOOOO JUVENILE and brainless...

The covers of the albums (specialy during 80's) were done in such a kitsch fassion, as stated in a post above! Come on, I mean, it made me look on Maiden as just another music industry garbage!!!

Centuries later I start listening to MAIDEN. Song by song, growing on me, caughting me like that torture instrument, entering every part of my brain ... music is blowing me away, I donno what is happening to me. At the age of 30!!!

I started to think - well, I'm sure their lyrics are crap, if music is superb. 

My god, when I started to read the lyrics and started to think, I was blown away again... (I mean, I used to read classics, Dostoyevsky, Chekov, Balsac, Poe, Goethe...)... Lyrics were in many cases pure poetry, and with years it was getting much better, deeper, with multiple meanings and endlessly rewarding the more I analysed them...

What is happening here???

Then I saw Rock In Rio DVD... 
Then I gathered everything I could get my hands onto...
Then I saw them in Belgrade 2 months ago!!!

And now I am totaly puzzled. These guys became one big part of my life, and I am asking WHO IS TO BLAME for not letting me know how great this stuff is?

I mean, Derek Riggs became better and better with time, but still!!! Why producers decided to hide such briliant artists behind cheap comic horror-book covers??? And stupid clothes (let's face it)   

At least I am happy to know there are many nice stuff in life still waiting for me, popping out when you least expect them! Why life hide perls beneath the crap?

UP THE IRONS!

 

[Urizen]

Iron Maiden, the unique.

I saw them in Belgrade too. Have you by any chance saw a guy eating a chicken sandwich while in the crowd waiting for the concert to start?

I have also noticed that the covers very often do imprint a prejudice about horror, death and what not to those unfamiliar with the band, and metal music in general. First impression for many is a very strong one, and regarding Maiden that impression is often a t-shirt with a horror like monster on it. Ah, well, that's the beauty of it, one must show interest and go past that and delve deep in to the lyrics, and the music to find what he/she's been missing out on.

 

[cybermodo]

Maiden covers were particulary funny and looked cheap! Obviously aimed at kids intoxicated with trivial horror comics of the time. I think horror genre can be extremely fertile ground for developing great art (as it was, actualy, history of art is filled with it)... but this about Eddie was not!   

As I said, later on it got better, and took more symbolic approach - ok, it was fun searching for all references in Somewhere In Time covers!  
Still, never looked serious too me!

Iron Maiden was like a beautiful girl somebody packed into a dress of a village idiot. Maybe that was some internal joke - Let's surprise them! Give them what they least expected!

I saw many times how people hide stupidity and incompetence behind serious appearance, but very rarely I saw SUCH intelligence and creativity and craft hidden behind such fuzzy representation.

OH Well! Even Hamlet pretended to be a looney!   

 

[Anonymous]

dude, welcome aboard, first of all. and what a good way to get into metal.  i was the same way, not with punk, with something im ashamed of...  dave matthews...  ...  (yeah im a guy, and straight) i was growing up around it and around thinking metal was garbage.  then i started getting into zeppelin... then van halen...  ozzy...gnr... acdc maiden then eventually metallica.  dont care much for death metal all though i dont mind some screamo.  then i saw it wasnt all morbid...  there was tooth metal!  even metallica would smile for photoshoots and shit. they were there, playin and damn glad about it.  thats whats nice about metal.  youre never too old to try somethin new, mate.  yea i know i rant.

 

[cybermodo]

Iron Maiden, the unique.

I saw them in Belgrade too. Have you by any chance saw a guy eating a chicken sandwich while in the crowd waiting for the concert to start?

I have also noticed that the covers very often do imprint a prejudice about horror, death and what not to those unfamiliar with the band, and metal music in general. First impression for many is a very strong one, and regarding Maiden that impression is often a t-shirt with a horror like monster on it. Ah, well, that's the beauty of it, one must show interest and go past that and delve deep in to the lyrics, and the music to find what he/she's been missing out on.

Hello there, brother! Since we live in the same place - we all know how pandemonium can look like, don't we? Being a bit older than you I remember times back in 1991... so why would anyone need horror described in metal when we had it all during years?

To tell the truth, punk (specially Ramones) helped me and my mates back then to think more positive and in away escape from bizzare and horrorfying reality. What to say... maybe a quote from Maiden (what else?  )

4. Fortunes Of War

[Harris]

After the war and now that they've sent us homeward
I can't help but feel that I'm on my own
No one can see just what this conflict has done to
The minds of the man who are on their way home

I'm scared for life but it's not my flesh that's wounded
So how can I face the torment alone
The vivid scenes and all the recurring nightmares
I lay there and sweat until it gets light...

People say "Don't worry"
Say that time's a perfect healer
That the nightmares they will come to pass
Can't hear what they're saying
I am living in my own world
And I'm feeling trance like all the time

I hear voices in my head
Could I really be going crazy
In the night the visions seem so real
Do you care if you live or die
When you laugh are you really crying
You're not sure what's feel anymore

Fortunes of war
Fortunes of war no pain anymore

Sometimes I wake
I feel that my spirit's broken
I wonder if I've the strenght... to carry on.

 

[wheeze]

Iron Maiden was like a beautiful girl somebody packed into a dress of a village idiot. Maybe that was some internal joke - Let's surprise them! Give them what they least expected!

I'm from the UK and have been a Maiden fan since the early 80's. The album covers & image of the band were an essential part of the package. UK metal bands in the 80's all had similar artwork & fashion sense. I seem to remember any band that didn't have long hair, wear leather/spandex or have suitably demonic album covers were considered unworthy of attention. So while i accept that some of the artwork and dress-sense may look a bit dated now, they were simply fitting in with the 80's metal scene.

Personally i love all the Maiden artwork and think the covers add a great deal to the overall package. I remember as a teenager i spent many hours analysing the LP cover of "Live After Death"...its still my favourite Maiden sleeve to this day.

 

[Natalie]

Don't judge a book by its cover!

Well, that might be the subliminal message here, but it's probably more like what Wheeze said (fitting in with the 80's metal scene).

Then again, who doesn't love Eddie T. Head?

 

[cybermodo]

Well, now that I'm 100% fan of tham, I am totaly biased so I like it too!   
Back then in the 80's... huh! I was in comics quite alot, and Eddie had his appeal, but then again I was at the same time much into movie classics and computer games artwork to appreciate better works of popular art...

And I was not commenting the way the guys dresed on the stage (talking about "dressed as village idiot") - it was targeted on the cover "dress"...

Although SOME people might object on dressing as wel   

But to tel the truth, I like 80's, I was a kid then and everything was wonderful! Cindy Lauper, Michael Jackson, A-HA, Dire Straits, MTV...  Hurrey for Retro!