rate all 17 Maiden albums best to worst

I was just at RnR Ribs this week and by chance Nicko was there! He was kind enough to give me his list...Titles are listed from best to worst.

17. Senjutsu
16. Book of Souls
15. Final Frontier
14. A Matter of Life and Death
13. Dance of Death
12. Brave New World
11. Virtual XI
10. The X Factor
9. Fear of the Dark
8. No Prayer for the Dying
7. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
6. Somewhere in Time
5. Powerslave
4. Piece of Mind
3. Number of the Beast
2. Killers
1. Iron Maiden
 
Last edited:
Remains the same:
  1. Somewhere In Time
  2. Powerslave
  3. Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
  4. Piece Of Mind
  5. Killers
  6. A Matter Of Life And Death
  7. The X Factor
  8. Iron Maiden
  9. The Number Of The Beast
  10. Dance Of Death
  11. Senjutsu
  12. The Final Frontier
  13. The Book Of Souls
  14. No Prayer For The Dying
  15. Brave New World
  16. Virtual XI
  17. Fear Of The Dark
 
That's really hard for me to rate them. IMO, they are all great. Everyone is different. That's what they are all so special to me.

Well, let's go (but my ranking may change daily according to my mood)...

1) Powerslave
2) Brave New World
3) Somewhere In Time
4) A Matter Of Life And Death
5) The Number Of The Beast
6) Piece Of Mind
7) Senjutsu
8) Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
9) The X Factor
10) No Prayer For The Dying
11) The Book Of Souls
12) Dance Of Death
13) Fear Of The Dark
14) Killers
15) Virtual XI
16) The Final Frontier
17) Iron Maiden (just because of the sound)
 
  1. Somewhere In Time
  2. A Matter Of Life And Death
  3. Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
  4. Powerslave
  5. Brave New World
  6. The Number Of The Beast
  7. Piece Of Mind
  8. Dance of Death
  9. Iron Maiden
  10. Killers
  11. Senjutsu
  12. The Book of Souls
  13. The X Factor
  14. The Final Frontier
  15. Fear Of The Dark
  16. Virtual XI
  17. No Prayer For The Dying
11-15 are the most difficult for me to rank, because although they are lower on the list, I consider them all good albums, just not top 10 worthy. The order of those 5 changes on the daily. Within the top 10, NOTB and POM flip every now and then, but I've been enjoying Beast more as of late. The bottom two are pretty much set in stone, unless God forbid they release something truly terrible in the future lol.
 
I recall putting in a ranking on this forum a couple years ago. Here is an updated one although I doubt it has changed much except of course for needing to slot in the last 2 or 3 releases.
1. Somewhere in Time.
2. Powerslave
3. Piece of Mind.
4. Killers
5. The Number of the Beast.
6. AMOLAD
7. Brave New World
8. SSOASS
9. Iron Maiden
10. The Book of Souls
11. The Final Frontier
12. No Prayer
13. Dance of Death
14. Senjutsu
15. Fear of the Dark
16.X Factor
17. Virtual XI
 
chaosapiant said:
I can’t believe all the low rankings Final Frontier is getting. That album is phenomenal from start to finish with, imo, not a single weak track.
Click to expand...
Its my number 11. Its an awesome album I agree. Especially for Starblind which is one of my favorite songs. Its just that I like 10 other awesome albums slightly better.
 
karljant said:
Remains the same:
  1. Somewhere In Time
  2. Powerslave
  3. Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
  4. Piece Of Mind
  5. Killers
  6. A Matter Of Life And Death
  7. The X Factor
  8. Iron Maiden
  9. The Number Of The Beast
  10. Dance Of Death
  11. Senjutsu
  12. The Final Frontier
  13. The Book Of Souls
  14. No Prayer For The Dying
  15. Brave New World
  16. Virtual XI
  17. Fear Of The Dark
Click to expand...
X Factor at 7 is very interesting....
 
PhantomOfTheOpera said:
There's not only one valid list and these things tend to change a bit around based on the feeling.
So today I feel it would go like this, if you ask me tomorrow I might change yet more:

1. Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
2. Somewhere In Time
3. The Number Of The Beast
4. Brave New World
5. Powerslave
6. Piece Of Mind
7. Senjutsu
8. A Matter Of Life And Death
9. Iron Maiden
10. The Final Frontier
11. The Book Of Souls
12. Fear Of The Dark
13. Killers
14. No Prayer For The Dying
15. Dance Of Death
16. The X Factor
17. Virtual XI
Click to expand...
Your list is more similar to mine than any others lol.
 
01 Somewhere In Time
02 Brave New World
03 Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
04 Powerslave
05 Dance Of Dead
06 Senjutsu
07 Iron Maiden
08 The Number Of The Beast
09 Book Of Souls
10 Piece Of Mind
11 No Prayer For The Dying
12 Fear Of The Dark
13 A Matter Of Life And Death
14 The X Factor
15 Killers
16 Virtual XI
17 The Final Frontier
 
1-14 is really hard to decide the last 3 I like them less than the others

1 Powerslave
2 7th son
3 Piece of mind
4 Killers
5 Iron Maiden
6 Somewhere in time
7 The number of the beast
8 Senjutsu
9 Brave new world
10 A matter of life and death
11 Book of souls
12 Dance of death
13 Final frontier
14 The X factor
15 Fear of the Dark
16 Virtual XI
17 No Prayer for the Dying
 
I remember when No Prayer For The Dying came out I used to dislike it all the way. now it's one of my favourite albums. anybody experienced the same actually?
 
Dick Brucinson said:
I remember when No Prayer For The Dying came out I used to dislike it all the way. now it's one of my favourite albums. anybody experienced the same actually?
Click to expand...
Sort of.

I think NPFTD was a huge letdown after Seventh Son, and that album even rehashes some parts of Seventh Son (the chorus of “Fates Warning” is basically the same as “The Clairvoyant”, and the interlude in “Mother Russia” borrows heavily from Seventh Son’s title track, to name a couple). It also has a few really cringey moments on it, like parts of “Holy Smoke” and the chorus of “The Assassin”.

That said, I think NPFTD is still a solidly good album overall with a few great songs on it, and in the end it’s a middle of the pack Maiden record that gets overly maligned. They’ve certainly done much better, but they’ve also done much worse.
 
Jer said:
Sort of.

I think NPFTD was a huge letdown after Seventh Son, and that album even rehashes some parts of Seventh Son (the chorus of “Fates Warning” is basically the same as “The Clairvoyant”, and the interlude in “Mother Russia” borrows heavily from Seventh Son’s title track, to name a couple). It also has a few really cringey moments on it, like parts of “Holy Smoke” and the chorus of “The Assassin”.

That said, I think NPFTD is still a solidly good album overall with a few great songs on it, and in the end it’s a middle of the pack Maiden record that gets overly maligned. They’ve certainly done much better, but they’ve also done much worse.
Click to expand...
yeah, the Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-style chorus in The Assassin is weird. but I remember The Assassin worked great live. 1990 was the first tour I ever saw them, and NPFTD WASN'T really a letdown it more FELT like a letdown just because SIT and SSOASS both had that great productions. I wish I had seen them earlier, but in 1988 I was only 13 and my parents didn't wanna let me go see them live.
 
Dick Brucinson said:
I remember when No Prayer For The Dying came out I used to dislike it all the way. now it's one of my favourite albums. anybody experienced the same actually?
Click to expand...
Not one of my favorites but sure did grew on me with the passing of ages. As @Jer said Seventh Son, Somewhere In Time and Powerslave set the bar really high (to be fair all the previous albums since their debut are truly amazing IMO). I remember it was a feast when it came out, watching Can I Play With Madness' clip for the first time... it was simply mind blowing especially for a 12 year old boy. No Prayer on the other hand provided small doses of almost everything I loved in Maiden as a teenager: it was way less pompous and epic much more straight forward while not having the pace and stamina of a Killers. So it was the first Maiden album that didn't made my blood boil so to speak. Yeah there were some songs I truly loved from the get go like Tailgunner, Bring Your Daughter, Fates Warning and even Holy Smoke but it all sounded a bit bland.
In retrospect I came to love almost every single song from the album with the exception of Hooks In You. Especially after the release of Fear Of The Dark and the huge let down it was (and still is) for me. I mean FOTD has three songs that would shine strongly on NPFTD (Be Quick Or Be Dead, Afraid To Shoot Strangers and the title track) but the remainder of the tracks are IMO a couple of ok songs and a lot of fillers and stinkers. On the other hand NPFTD is much more solid. It's not an album made of jaw dropping compositions but looking back, despite some lack of ambition, I find every song (with the aforementioned exception) to be quite enjoyable.
So yeah, it's oftenly overviewed since it was released after a spree of mind blowing records and although it's at #14 on my ranking that's not because I consider it to be a bad album by any stretch (I even gave it a high rating). It's just because I prefer other albums. and that speaks tons about the quality of Maiden's catalogue.
 
chaosapiant said:
I can’t believe all the low rankings Final Frontier is getting. That album is phenomenal from start to finish with, imo, not a single weak track.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't call it phenomenal. It's a really good album IMO. But I'm 100% with you when you say not a single weak track and I mentioned it on my review. Every single song has something to say the least interesting... and when I consider The Man That Would Be King to be perhaps the least exciting cut from the pack it really means the remainder are good to say the least since TMTWBK despite dragging itself a bit too much is IMO a cool track (especially the last part).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top