April 2020 Feature Release - The Guardians Edition

It's now April which of course means that we'll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we're asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. Ben & I will certainly be contributing & we look forward to hearing your thoughts too.       

This month's feature release for The Guardians is 1982's classic "The Number Of The Beast album from NWOBHM legends Iron Maiden". It was arguably the most important release from the entire NWOBHM movement & still easily represents Maiden's commercial peak. We're keen to hear how you guys rate it comparison to Maiden's star-studded back catalogue & the heavy metal genre as a whole.

The Number of the Beast is one heavy metal's most important and influential albums to ever be released. 9/10, but you all knew that already.

...Well, I guess I should elaborate. I mentioned in my review for this album that heavy metal seems to have one of the tightest knit communities across all genres. Where the best music that heavy metal has to offer is almost universally praised and becomes immortalized by those who listen to it. It's one of the reasons I came to this website in the first place! Most of today's music in the genre is very difficult to find. And having a website like this dedicated to talking about heavy metal was about as good a place as any to start!

As for this band themselves, Iron Maiden is where much of my knowledge of heavy metal started alongside many of the Iron Maiden adjacent groups. And this album still holds up to this day. Which is amazing because this album only saw the group scratching the surface in term of potential; simply put, this might be the bands third best album (so long as Powerslave and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son exist).

Influence is important, even in a genre like heavy metal. We owe it to ourselves to promote our favourite groups even after they become mainstream, provided, of course, they don't kill their own artistic integrity. Because they may influence the next generation of heavy metal. You have no idea how many non-metal fans I know have zero problem jamming the hell out when "Run to the Hills" comes on. You should try it the next time you're in a room of people. You'll be surprised by how many sing along.

9/10

Great review saxy. For the record, I've loved "The Number Of The Beast" since the late 80's but it's never quite managed to become a true classic for me personally. I don't think there's a genuinely weak track included but I also don't think that "Invaders" & "22, Acacia Avenue" are quite up to genuine classic status either. The real classics are the two big hits in "Run To The Hills" & the title track as well as the brilliant "Children Of The Damned". I have to admit that I've never rated "Hallowed Be Thy Name" quite as highly as most people seem to but it's still of a very high quality. Our feelings are somewhat aligned as my Maiden sweet spot is the trio of albums from 1984 through to 1988. Traditional heavy metal simply doesn't get any better than those records. 4/5

For anyone that's interested, you can find a comprehensive review of everything about the writing, recording & resulting release of "The Number Of The Beast" on episode ten of Metal Academy Podcast. See the link below:

http://metalacademy.libsyn.com/ep-010-iron-maiden-reckon-the-number-of-the-beast

Late to the party here but I am not a fan of this release.  As per my review, I find it to be massively inconsistent and at times laughably bad.  It follows my favourite Maiden album and so the bar is high for me for it to come off the back of Killers and nail it.  That having been said when it is good, it is really good,  but largely for me the tracks I enjoy the most are the ones that don't get talked about too much beyond the "hits", with "Children of the Damned" and "Hallowed Be Thy Name" being of particular note as the stronger elements of the album I do enjoy.  Hence the album clocks a 3/5 for me.

I should also do a review of this classic at some point as well, but I'm in agreement that Number of the Beast, on the whole, is vastly overrated. At the end of the day, it's an album of singles, with "Children of the Damned", "Number of the Beast", "Run to the Hills", and "Hallowed Be Thy Name" being the only tracks that really matter on this one. The other songs are good, but not what you would expect from a so-called 5 star Maiden release. Since those other songs are a full half of the album, it's hard to say that this album is a true classic compared to the other Maiden albums that normally vie for that top spot. While none of the other 4 songs that make up Number of the Beast left any sort of impression on me, the rest of the album is a true classic so I can't give it any less than a 4/5.

Everyone seems to have a different favorite Maiden album though, and in the end Powerslave wins out for me personally.