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I STAND BY MY
STORY because once, a long time ago, I owned Iron Maiden’s “Piece
of Mind,” and “The Number of the Beast,” too, and though
I was smug and clever enough to consider myself aloof from the great unwashed
who liked Iron Maiden unironically, I was also, in private, pretty fond
of their unapologetic theatrical bombast. “Where Eagles Dare”?
Hey, now: that’s quality stuff. “Flight of Icarus”? You know
what I’m talkin’ about. “Run to the Hills”? Get with
the program, people. That stuff ruled. It followed the dictum that Big Black
would later spell out in its liner notes (“no love songs”) but
seemed to do so more out a sense of adventure than of scorn for the public’s
admittedly bad taste. Twinkle-twinkle blurry-fingers guitar solos, pseudo-operatic
vocals, rhythm sections that could stop on a dime -- use that combination
as the bedrock for songs about guys dying in foxholes during the second
world war, or the battle of Armageddon, or the invention of the airplane,
and you’ve got a recipe for really corny, thoroughly enjoyable brawny-guy
metal.
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