Powerslave
Four immortal songs, three solid ones and a thirteen-minute epic that towers over everything: why Maiden's fifth album remains their benchmark despite a sagging middle.
First came the cover. Derek Riggs' pyramid temple with Eddie enthroned as pharaoh — an image you pinned to the wall in 1984 before you had even heard the record. Forty years on, the same iconography still adorns stages, T-shirts and, this summer, an entire festival site at Knebworth. Except: the album never needed any of it.
Because "Powerslave" is the moment Iron Maiden stop being a very good NWOBHM band and start building something of their own. "Aces High" opens with that dive-bombing riff which has been allowed to open every concert since. "2 Minutes To Midnight" is the perfect single: a chorus tens of thousands can bellow, and a lyric about doomsday clocks that never turns silly. Along the way there is even an instrumental ("Losfer Words") nobody would have missed — and which is fun anyway.
The real reason this album endures sits at the end. "Rime Of The Ancient Mariner" runs thirteen minutes, sets a Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem to music and, on paper, deserved to be a disaster. Instead: a middle section becalmed like the ship itself, a build that takes its time, and a finale that still has the listener gripped ten minutes in. If you want to know why Steve Harris' songwriting is more than galloping basslines, listen here.
The weakness lies in the middle. "Flash Of The Blade", "The Duellists" and "Back In The Village" are solid but interchangeable — Maiden on autopilot, framed by four pieces that made history. And Bruce Dickinson's voice, then at its peak, has to fight a production that today sounds thinner than it should.
No matter. What stands here is the blueprint: history paintings, twin guitars, a singer with operatic ambition and an epic at the close. Iron Maiden have repeated it often since. They have rarely bettered it.
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Strengths
- +"Rime Of The Ancient Mariner" — thirteen minutes that never sag
- +"Aces High": perhaps the finest opener of their career
- +Bruce Dickinson at the absolute peak of his voice
- +Derek Riggs' artwork has become pop culture in its own right
Weaknesses
- −The middle stretch — "Flash Of The Blade", "The Duellists", "Back In The Village" — sounds like autopilot
- −The production is too thin for the material
- −"Losfer Words" is an instrumental nobody would have missed
Verdict
Not a seamless masterpiece — the middle noticeably sags. But the peaks are so high it hardly matters: "Aces High", the title track and above all "Rime Of The Ancient Mariner" define how much ambition heavy metal can carry. The blueprint Maiden are still measured against.