Seventh Son Cover Art Explanation ?

The Saint

The Saint

Powerslave
Staff member
Mav, here's an interesting view on the sleeve of Seventh Son (the first one is just to understand what the discussion is all about):

[a href=\'http://www.ironmaiden.org/showpost.php?p=100288&postcount=23\' target=\'_blank\']http://www.ironmaiden.org/showpost.php?p=100288&postcount=23[/a]

[a href=\'http://www.ironmaiden.org/showpost.php?p=100655&postcount=24\' target=\'_blank\']http://www.ironmaiden.org/showpost.php?p=100655&postcount=24[/a]

Cheers
 
very cool info indeed. here's some more i found...
Orc
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


A Latin word for a demon or a creature of the underworld, the word Orc was revived by J. R. R. Tolkien in his fictional stories of Middle-earth as the name of a race of creatures that are often used by evil forces as soldiers.


Sources of the name "orc"
Orcus, in Roman mythology, was an alternative name for Pluto, Hades, or Dis Pater, god of the land of the dead. The name "Orcus" seems to have been given to his evil, punishing side, as the god who tormented evildoers in the afterlife.

Pliny the Elder wrote of orcs in his Historia naturalis, describing a sea monster with large teeth. In Orlando Furioso, an epic by Ludovico Ariosto, the name of "orc" was given to a sea monster that captured the damsel Angelica, and was fought by the hero Rogero riding a hippogriff. It is this use of the word that gave us the term orcinus orca as the scientific name for the killer whale.

From this usage, the word "orc" made it into English by being borrowed by Michael Drayton in his Polyolbion, an epic poem about Brutus the Trojan and the mythical founders of Britain, and also appears in the epic poem Paradise Lost, by John Milton. William Blake names one of the characters in his complex mythology "Orc"; Blake's Orc, a proper name, seems to be the embodiment of creative passion and energy, and stands opposed to Urizen, the embodiment of reason.
 
ok, i emailed the man about it, here's his reply:

HI it's Riggs
I am afraid that your friend is talking nonsense.

I do not read Blake, the Blake I have read I think is just complete crap,
his writings are the rantings of a schizophrenic (he had a severe mental
disorder)

the seventh son cover has nothing at all to do with any of that.

the single covers for that album ( the clairvoyant, can I play with madness
and the evil men do) are kind of sybolic and feature a dimembered eddie, an
image which I came upon by accident. I was designing the clairvoyant and I
was using an eddie with three faces (like the roman god Janus who had two or
three faces, I forget which, one for the past, one for the present and one
for the future.
anyway I drew the eddie faces, but because they were so close together I
couldn't work out how to add the tongue and the inside of the mouth, so in
the end I rubbed it out, and it looked so good that I kept it like that.
so having done this style of picture I decided to keep the style for the
album as well, in order to keep a visual theme. that is why eddie is ripping
himself open.
I put him floating above an ocean, then decided to add some flying
icebergs in the background.
There wasn't any reference to the past covers in this painting so
maiden's manager said that steve wanted some of the past eddies in the
background as well (that idea had been thrown around before when the idea
for the cover was a bit different)
so I put the previous album cover eddies in the background as melted ice
figures.

all that stuff about Blake, forget it, it's rubbish

have fun
all the best
D
 
Excellent ! Mav will be able to add that to the IMC.

It would be interesting to know what made him design the ocean both solid (with holes) and liquid (with waves).

And, of course, what were the previous ideas he's talking about [!--emo&:D--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/biggrin.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'biggrin.gif\' /][!--endemo--]

I know it's asking much, but maybe one day we'll know.

Thanks a lot, gor !

Cheers
 
It is indeed very interesting and will feature one day one the Commentary. I already knew it though, as Riggsy had been kind enough to let me know that he didn't include any meaning in this artwork (that was a few years ago). I only wanted to know what kind of weird tales you lot were going to come up with! [!--emo&:P--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/tongue.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'tongue.gif\' /][!--endemo--]
 
[a href=\'http://www.donegani.demon.co.uk/cc/images4/bgjanus.jpg\' target=\'_blank\']http://www.donegani.demon.co.uk/cc/images4/bgjanus.jpg[/a]

[!--emo&;)--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/wink.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'wink.gif\' /][!--endemo--] how similar to the single cover!

Saint, it immidieatly popped in my head to ask about these, but if I keep bugging him he may add me to his spam filter list! [!--emo&:P--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/tongue.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'tongue.gif\' /][!--endemo--]
 
[!--QuoteBegin-gor+Jun 3 2004, 11:25 PM--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(gor @ Jun 3 2004, 11:25 PM)[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--] [a href=\'http://www.donegani.demon.co.uk/cc/images4/bgjanus.jpg\' target=\'_blank\']http://www.donegani.demon.co.uk/cc/images4/bgjanus.jpg[/a]

[!--emo&;)--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/wink.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'wink.gif\' /][!--endemo--]  how similar to the single cover!

Saint, it immidieatly popped in my head to ask about these, but if I keep bugging him he may add me to his spam filter list!  [!--emo&:P--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/tongue.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'tongue.gif\' /][!--endemo--] [/quote]
Yeah, yeah [!--emo&:D--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/biggrin.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'biggrin.gif\' /][!--endemo--]

Maybe wait a month or two and send him another mail [!--emo&:P--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/tongue.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'tongue.gif\' /][!--endemo--]

Or a year or two, we have all the time ! [!--emo&:)--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/smile.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'smile.gif\' /][!--endemo--]

Cheers
 
Yeah , I never understood that whole art crap.....

"This painting conveys the plight of pigmy strumpets rights to free speech ..."

please !

Its just a cool painting that he did to pay the rent...thats the hidden meaning behind all artists work.


$$$$$$$$$$$$

Seventh isnt one of my Fave Riggs pieces , but cool nonetheless.
 
[!--QuoteBegin-gor+Jun 3 2004, 07:46 PM--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(gor @ Jun 3 2004, 07:46 PM)[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--](like the roman god Janus who had two or
three faces, I forget which, one for the past, one for the present and one
for the future.
[snapback]70193[/snapback]​
[/quote]

Past...1
Present...2
Future... hmm, this is hard, 2 or 3

[!--emo&:lol:--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/lol[1].gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'lol[1].gif\' /][!--endemo--]

I don't really like this artworks as much as others but it is still amazin. My favourite is the Evil that Men Do. I like the way the man is depicted as behind Eddies mouth - behind bars.
 
Well that is certainly interesting! I long assumed there was some sort of mystical hidden meaning (or some such) to the cover, like there is to the rest of the album. It kind of doesn't really make much sense in comparison to the previous ones.

For some reason, I am really amused by Riggsy's statement 'I put him floating above an ocean, then decided to add some flying icebergs in the background.' I just imagine him going 'Well I got all this space left, what to do with it? How about flying iceburgs and an ocean?' And then all these people go looking for in-depth meaning to it... like me?  :halo:

On a (semi) related note, I once saw someone with a Seventh Son cover T-shirt at Detroit Metropolitan Airport when I used to work there. It was spiffy.
 
At least five of the album's songs ("Moonchild", "Infinite Dreams", "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son", "The Prophecy" and "The Clairvoyant") can be directly related to a main lyrical storyline inspired by the folklore concept. The idea came to Steve Harris after he read the story of The Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, a series of books written by author Orson Scott Card.

Lyrically, the album centers around some main philosophical ideas: good vs. evil, mysticism, prophetic vision, reincarnation and afterlife. Almost all the album includes direct or indirect references to questions regarding to these concepts and poetically refers the answers.

Stylistically, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son develops the sounds first heard on Somewhere in Time (1986), and continues the band's lyrical exploration of topics related to mysticism, power, and the occult.
 
looking at it. I have read it on wikipedia before. ooooo we got a PLAGIARIZER.
 
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