"The number of the beast (EMI, 1982)
At the peak of the wave, ready to make a major commercial breakthrough, on the brink of universal fame, having just returned from a world tour that broadened his horizons, Paul Di'Anno inexplicably leaves (or is ousted from) the band. To exaggerate, one might say that the long history of Iron Maiden ends here. The continuation, in fact, aside from being devoid of the refined spirit of Paul Di'Anno, will witness nothing but a gradual refinement and intensification of the sound, increasingly clean and powerful (also in light of the heavy metal onslaughts that necessarily require an increase in decibels to stay relevant), splitting between ballad pieces and power songs or blending a piece that is half ballad, half power. The themes, while always varying, conceptually remain anchored to those initial ones (for better or worse), and will even exacerbate them with rhetoric and artifice to be more flamboyant and thus sell more. This is due not only to Harris’s increasingly pronounced managerial mindset but also to the inclusion of former Samson member Bruce Dickinson (a rough proto-metal band that attempted to imitate Judas Priest and Kiss), now considered a living legend and objectively ranked first in terms of influence among heavy metal singers; however, with his perfect technique and theatrical screaming, his rhetoric and pleonasm seem light-years (poetically) inferior and less respectable than the existentialist Paul Di'Anno, who, notably, is the only one among the members of a band of "good guys" to have, especially after leaving, succumbed to various dependencies.
The number of the beast is universally regarded as the best album of the London quintet. In fact, it is the most famous. Again, with this work, metal takes once and for all its definitive and unmistakable course: the mature and (at the time) avant-garde sound of this album charts that course, as well as initiating it. From a compositional standpoint, however, contrary to the first two works (largely consisting of songs of uniformly high quality), we witness here, for the first time in the band's history, a more or less voluntary sell-out to mediocrity: incredibly, the album alternates absolute gems with sloppy, trivial, and boring "filler tracks."
Starting with the worst, it should be noted that: "Invaders" revels in a self-indulgent (self-indulgence being Dickinson's main flaw and, if not more, also Harris’s) middle-of-the-road power metal that in a very unconvincing manner invokes apocalyptic invasions of monstrous beings. "The prisoners" tries to redeem itself with a more martial framing, but the outrageously silly lyrics ("I'm not a number, I'm a free man") and the pedestrian choral pace make for 6 minutes of boredom. "Run to the hills" descends into the realm of alternative good feelings (the dedication is strangely, given the new wave context, to the Native Americans of the reservations), qualifying itself as famous yet loathed; the shrillness of the chorus sung by Dickinson is nauseating ("run for your life...": the only reason to run is to escape from this mess!). "Gangland" (and the Maiden in "Gangland" style will produce dozens of tracks) has no reason to exist and indeed signifies nothing; however, among the quartet, it is the least bad, if nothing else supported by a sincere drive.
Between good and bad lies "The number of the beast," chronicling a demonic dream introduced by a piece from the Apocalypse of St. John: regarded by critics and fans as an unmatched must, yet aside from Dickinson’s remarkable scream in the central sections, it has little to say. The same goes for "666" (of which the Maiden even made a touching horror-style video complete with fog, papier-mâché zombies, and stretchy tights), even if it is true that it has entered the metal iconography, it is also true that it was present in the music scene since 1971 when Aphrodite's Child even dedicated an album to it (not to mention the "Their satanic m
