From Steve Harris’ galloping bass to Bruce Dickinson’s instantly recognisable voice, few bands sound as distinctive as Iron Maiden. No one is going to hear Run To The Hills or Fear Of The Dark and confuse it with anyone else, which is precisely why they’re one of the most successful bands of the last 50 years.
But Maiden have delivered some surprises along the way. Their illustrious back catalogue is studded with a handful of songs that stray from their sound for which they’re known, from strange intergalactic ballads to obscure hard rock b-sides. Here are four Iron Maiden songs that sound nothing like Iron Maiden.
Strange World (1980)
The likes of Running Free, Phantom Of The Opera and Iron Maiden itself are so deeply embedded in metal’s DNA that it’s easy to forget Maiden threw a couple of curveballs onto their self-titled debut album. Remember Tomorrow is the famous one – a song that goes from a whisper to a roar, and one that Bruce Dickinson recently said he would no longer perform out of respect to the main who originally sang it, his late predecessor Paul Di’Anno.
But much weirder is the utterly un-Maiden-like Strange World. Five-and-a-half minutes of languid, lava lamp guitars and stoned ambience, it sounds less like ’Arry and co than some early 70s prog band – or maybe Black Sabbath’s similarly cosmic Planet Caravan, with which it shares a woozy atmosphere. Whether any illicit smokables were involved isn’t clear, but this is the sound of Iron Maiden floating in space.
Prodigal Son (1981)
Maiden’s second album, Killers, was the sound of a band hitting full gallop, but there’s one song that stands out amid such nailed on early 80s metal classics as Wrathchild and the title track. Nestled towards the back of the album is Prodigal Son, a mellow semi-ballad that dials back the East End aggro for rolling acoustic guitars and a yearning Paul Di’Anno vocal in which the old rogue expresses regret for selling his soul to the devil. If Iron Maiden ever decided an unplugged show, this is would be a cert for the setlist.
Reach Out (1986)
We’re cheating slightly with this one, but bear with us. Reach Out was actually written by Dave Colwell, an old mate of Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith who played with the latter and various of his bandmates in The Entire Population Of Hackney, a blink-and-you-missed-it side project whose entire career amounted to a pair of knockabout gigs in December 1985.
Reach Out was one of the few original songs played at those gigs, and it was resurrected by Maiden themselves the following year as the b-side of the Wasted Years single. Even in their hands, the song is closer to radio-friendly 80s hard rock than Maiden themselves. The difference is further exacerbated by the fact that it features Smith on lead vocals, leaving Bruce Dickinson to provide backing vocals.
It may not have opened up a new musical avenue for Maiden, but it did for Smith – by the end of the 80s, he quit to launch his own group, the hard rock-leaning A.S.a.P (aka Adrian Smith And Project).
Satellite 15… The Final Frontier (2010)
Bruce Dickinson’s powerhouse voice ensures that pretty anyone who knows the name Iron Maiden can recognise one of their songs within seconds of him opening his mouth. But the opening track of Maiden’s 11th album, The Final Frontier, is a different matter.
Strictly speaking, it’s two songs in one. The second half, The Final Frontier itself, is prime modern Maiden, an exultant, to-infinity-and-beyond anthem. But the first part, Satellite 15, is the most left-field thing Maiden have ever recorded with Bruce.
The slow-building track starts with a fuzzy, machine-like bass which is soon joined by a machine-gunning percussive barrage and slashing and squealing guitars that echo around it all, before Bruce eventually comes in after two-and-half-minutes, an astronaut lost in deep space sending his final transmission home. It’s unsettling, discombobulating and brilliant. Play this to anyone who has never heard the album, and they’d be hard pushed to guess who it is.
