Classic Albums: Iron Maiden – Number Of The Beast
Picture: B-
Sound: B- Extras: C Main Program: B-
Iron Maiden had a building following when in the great
music year of 1982, they found a breakthrough hit with their album Number Of
The Beast, a big hit in the Rock market that did not make much of a showing
on the Pop charts. Despite this, the
band began a run of hit albums that would take them into the early 1990s and
this installment of Classic Albums looks at how that happened.
Timing simply seems to be part of it, a more rockin’
corollary to the New Romantics segment of British New wave that was thankfully
invading the U.S. charts. The band was
“bad” with its comic book Satan references via the Marvel Comics style and
Heavy Metal was still on the upswing.
It was filled with hidden messages that amounted to nothing important,
though one song was about something most fans of the band could never grasp and
would probably never spend the time to deeply investigate. The Prisoner was based on the Patrick
McGoohan classic TV series of the same name (reviewed elsewhere on this site)
and the story of how the band’s usually tough manager was unnerved having to
call McGoohan for permission to use audio segments of the show (much more
common now, known under names like “samples” or “sound bytes”) is the highlight
of the whole documentary. What McGoohan
said is classic and lead singer Bruce Dickinson on the actual set of the
series, still standing decades later, known on the show as The Village.
However, most of the program is devoted to how the album
was put together, how it took off and is a throwback to how great radio used to
be before broadcasting became the anti-democratic, anti-American menace known
as narrowcasting. Silly as the album
may ort may not be, many found it fun and the likelihood of such a thing
happening today is very slim. The band
burned out at Capitol Records by 1988, when they switched to Epic, but soon
were without Dickson by 1993. The band
never had a hit album again.
Unlike Hip Hop, Heavy Metal could easily conjure up the
Horror genre, and tracks here like the title song, Run For The Hills and
Children Of The Damned played right into this. Even if you find the music forgettable, the behind-the-scenes
will bring back interesting memories to those who were there and how good the
music business used to be to those who know not. No “syke” about it.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is just fine
for what is here, including the usual mix of old and new footage, but 1982 was
still not that long ago and this looks fine.
The audio is once again Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo with Pro Logic
surrounds, which will not equal any upcoming DVD-Audio or Super Audio CD
Capitol Records may issue, depending on which format they land up really
getting behind. Extras include some
additional interview clips with more chapters than the main program, but are
not as long. The Classic Albums
series proves once again they can make any music genre interesting, even for
non-fans.
- Nicholas Sheffo
