Released on September 3, 1984, Powerslave marked a serious step-up in craft and execution for Iron Maiden. Sure, the theatricality and ambition had been apparent since day one, but by their fifth album Maiden were staking their claim as the biggest metal band on the planet, a band without frontiers who'd reached the very top.
While the debate about which Iron Maiden album is best rages on, Powerslave remains a remarkable release in their canon, its influence spread far and wide across the metal scene. That in mind, Hammer spoke to some of metal's great and good to find out how the album has shaped modern metal.
Michael Amott (Arch Enemy)
“I remember very clearly getting Powerslave when it came out. My friend and I were both big metalheads, and he told me one morning at school, ‘Hey, I’ve got the new Iron Maiden album, I bought it yesterday.’ He didn’t live too far from school, so we got on our bikes and went to listen to it on the lunch break.
I loved punk, so I really liked the early records with Paul Di’Anno. With Powerslave, I really liked the faster songs like Aces High, which Arch Enemy actually covered on an old Iron Maiden tribute album in the 1990s. Back then, they lost me on a couple of tracks – I wasn’t ready for a 13-minute song like Rime Of The Ancient Mariner. But now I can see that’s the beginning of what Maiden became.”
Sam Matlock (Wargasm)
“I’m a proper Iron Maiden fanatic. I first heard them when I was really, really young. They were on some compilation CD on a guitar magazine or something. My mum got me [2002 best-of] Edward The Great, and I was, like, ‘Fuck me, this is life-changing.’ I started learning all their songs on guitar after that.
“Powerslave has some of my favourite Maiden riffs on it – Flash Of The Blade, that little hammeron, pull-off thing is super-exciting when you’re starting out as a guitarist. 2 Minutes To Midnight is 80s as fuck - the guitar riffs really get me. And Aces High is just amazing, though I prefer the live version with Churchill’s speech.
“Let’s be honest, Powerslave has one of the great covers of all time. When Derek Riggs was doing Eddie, it was just insane. There’s no way a young lad who’s into rock music could walk past that in HMV – there’s a massive fucking pyramid on it, for fuck’s sake!”
Eric Peterson (Testament)
“I was into Maiden since the first album – I was one of the first guys in the Bay Area to really shout about them. When Bruce joined, they really got it right - the songs, the production, everything. But by Powerslave, they were really expanding their sound, they weren’t regurgitating anything, just moving forward all the time.
“Aces High and 2 Minutes To Midnight are rocking songs, and of course the title track is very epic – we covered it [as a bonus track on 2012’s Dark Roots Of Earth] because it wasn’t an obvious song to cover. We added some heavier guitar, a little double bass [drumming], but you can’t stomp on that song.”
“Then you’ve got Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, which is something else. They were probably the first metal band to do that kind of long, epic song. Record companies would say, ‘No, too long, heavy metal fans don’t want that.’ And Maiden just went: ‘No, we know what heavy metal fans want, and it’s this.’”
Chris Jericho (Fozzy)
“I know people talk about Number Of The Beast or Piece Of Mind as being the classic, quintessential album, but for me it’s Powerslave. It’s the first one I bought, the first tour that I saw and it’s still my favourite.
“Every song on Powerslave is as good as the last. Then there’s the imagery, the cover, the way the band looked on the back, even something as simple as including the running time of the album. I couldn’t believe that they actually timed their songs and added them all together, so I started doing that with all my albums, finding out what the total runtime was because I saw it on the back of Powerslave.”
