
Iron Maiden's third studio album, The Number of the Beast, released in March 1982, marked a definitive moment in heavy metal history.
It was the band’s first album to feature vocalist Bruce Dickinson, the former Samson frontman whose operatic "air-raid siren" range replaced the abrupt, punkier stylings of the fired Paul Di'Anno, and introduced the phrase "Scream for me [insert name of city]! into the metal lexicon. The album was also the pinnacle of the NWOBHM movement, the moment that separated Maiden from the nearly-rans, the also-rans and the never-rans.