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Statistics
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Artists:
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6,825
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Albums:
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34,364
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Lyrics:
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288,438
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Song Views:
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43,889,132
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Reviews:
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10,300
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Comments:
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155,535
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Total Users:
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20,075
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Online Users:
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151
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Usage Statistics
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2 Minutes To Midnight
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Submitted By: Big D
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The song has references to the Doomsday Clock, the symbolic clock used by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In September 1953 the clock reached 11:58, the closest the clock ever got to midnight. This occurred when the United States and Soviet Union tested H-bombs within nine months of one another. This song is clearly presenting an anti-war view.
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Aces High
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Submitted By: Big D
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The song was a frequent concert opener and it was usually preceded by "Churchill's speech", a part of a famous speech that the British Prime Minister gave during World War II, the 4th of June 1940, 2 days after the French defeat and general retreat from France's lost battlefield with French and Belgian remaining troops gathered at Dunkerque.
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Aces High
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Submitted By: Big D
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The music video for "Aces High" features archive footages of Winston Churchill's speech, Allied troops in everyday life, real dogfights between RAF and Luftwaffe, black & white animated battle maps and even a brief appearance of Hitler speaking. A newer version of the video (available on the Visions of the Beast DVD) replaces the old footage with Flash animation by Camp Chaos, featuring the band and Eddie fighting Luftwaffe planes over Egypt. In the final scene of this video, after Eddie destroys the last German plane, the parachuting pilot is revealed to be Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, who has been parodied by Camp Chaos on their Napster Bad! series.
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Aces High
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Submitted By: Big D
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The song is also in the game Carmageddon 2.
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Flight Of Icarus
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Submitted By: Big D
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It was the first single by Iron Maiden that was released in the United States.
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Flight Of Icarus
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Submitted By: Big D
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The song is loosely based on the ancient Greek myth of Icarus who was imprisoned with his father Daedalus in the Labyrinth on Crete. So the pair fabricated wings for themselves from feathers and wax. Unfortunately Icarus, not heeding the advice of his father, flew too close to the sun, melting the wax that held the feathers together and thus fell to his death in the sea. Vocalist Bruce Dickinson admits that he had modified the original tale to make it an allegory of teenage rebellion against adult authority (which caused the death of Icarus in this case).
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Flight Of Icarus
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Submitted By: Big D
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Bassist Steve Harris feels that the studio version should have been played faster, so they play it faster live. "This little extra touch gives it a bit more fire" says the bassist and founder of Iron Maiden.
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Flight Of Icarus
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Submitted By: Big D
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The video for this track was directed by Jim Yukich and was filmed in the Bahamas at Compass Point Studios (where the album was recorded) as the band played a staged recording session of the track.
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Hallowed Be Thy Name
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Submitted By: Big D
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The song describes a man's thoughts just before being sent to the gallows. At first he feels terror and says he is not afraid of dying, but realizes he actually is afraid. At the end of the vocal section, the man gets executed; this is followed by a long instrumental section, culminating in his ambiguous final words, "Hallowed be thy name".
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Iron Maiden
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Submitted By: Big D
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The original recording featured Dennis Stratton and Dave Murray on guitars.
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Iron Maiden
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Submitted By: Big D
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The song is now well known as the band's signature song to the general public (along with "The Number of the Beast" and "Run to the Hills") and is usually played as one of the last songs of any given show.
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Iron Maiden
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Submitted By: Big D
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It writes about the spirit of an actual iron maiden torture device - it is not, contrary to popular belief, relating to the band itself.
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Iron Maiden
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Submitted By: Big D
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A live video was the 16th video played during the launch of MTV, making it the first heavy metal video ever played on MTV.
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Mission From 'Arry
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Submitted By: Big D
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"Mission from 'Arry" is a recording of an argument between bassist Steve Harris and drummer Nicko McBrain. The argument happened during the band's World Slavery tour in '84-'85, and occurred following a misunderstanding on stage between the two due to technical issues with Harris' bass. Vocalist Bruce Dickinson was recording the argument with a concealed tape recorder.
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Powerslave
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Submitted By: Big D
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It is a tale about the demise of an Egyptian pharaoh. The use of Egyptian imagery, such as the eye of Horus, and allusions to mythology is allegorical for vocalist Bruce Dickinson's spiteful outlook on the music industry, and how their greed and disrespect for talent leads to their own demise.
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Powerslave
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Submitted By: Big D
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On the 1998 remastered version of Powerslave, the songs "Back in the Village" and "Powerslave" were separated in the wrong places, thus making "Back in the Village" longer and "Powerslave" shorter (the sounds effects of someone screaming followed by a deep ominous laugh, as well as a short rolling drum fill were moved to the end of the former from the beginning of the latter).
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Revelations
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Submitted By: Big D
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It is based partly on a book by Aleister Crowley, but this is also juxtaposed with a verse taken from a hymn by G.K. Chesterton which forms the first verse of the song.
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Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
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Submitted By: Big D
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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge written in 1797–1799 and published in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads (1798).
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Run To The Hills
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Submitted By: Big D
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The song itself is about the conflict between Native Americans and the invading white men. The first verse is written from the point of view of the native Cree, the second from the point of view of white soldiers, and the third from a more neutral observer point of view. It may have been inspired by the film Soldier Blue, about the massacre of a peaceful Cheyenne village by US militia (one line goes "Soldier blue in the barren wastes" and then refers to rape and murder amongst other atrocities).
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Run To The Hills
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Submitted By: Big D
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This would be the first single released by the band to feature current vocalist Bruce Dickinson.
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Run To The Hills
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Submitted By: Big D
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In early 2002 "Run to the Hills" was again released as a single, and once again in a live version. This time it was the original studio version again, but with live recordings as B-sides. The single was released to raise money for the Clive Burr MS Trust Fund, to help former Iron Maiden drummer Clive Burr, who is suffering from multiple sclerosis. In March of 2002, Iron Maiden played three shows at the Brixton Academy in London to raise money for this trust fund, and the single was released around the same time. Two versions of this single exist, with different B-sides.
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Run To The Hills
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Submitted By: Big D
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"Run to the Hills" was released as a video in the early 1980s, which was later remade in the late 90s/early 2000s. The first video consisted of the band performing, interspersed with comical footage featuring Indians from the 1923 James Parrott film Uncovered Wagon. The later video removed all the old film footage and replaced it with Flash animation of Cyborg Eddie (from the Somewhere in Time cover) in a sci-fi Wild West setting, animated by Camp Chaos.
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Running Free
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Submitted By: Big D
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The song is about a troubled 16-year-old boy who runs away on a pick up truck, ends up in a Los Angeles jail and picks up a woman from a bar.
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Running Free
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Submitted By: Big D
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In 1985, a live version of the song was released as the first single from the album Live After Death (Maiden's twelfth single).
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Sanctuary
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Submitted By: Big D
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The song was included in the US release of their debut album Iron Maiden but it was not included in the UK/European release. However, when the album was re-released in 1998 the song was added to the UK release.
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Sanctuary
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Submitted By: Big D
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On live performances of the song, the band would always slip in the opening guitar riff of Queen's "Keep Yourself Alive" on the final portion of the instrumental section.
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The Number Of The Beast
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Submitted By: Big D
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The song is inspired by both a nightmare bandleader and bassist Steve Harris had after watching the movie Damien: Omen II, and the storyline of the poem Tam o' Shanter.
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The Number Of The Beast
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Submitted By: Big D
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The track is known for its very long, high-pitched and guttural scream by Bruce Dickinson at the end of the intro. In the documentary on the album of the same name, as part of the Classic Albums series by the BBC, Dickinson said this was due to producer Martin Birch forcing Bruce to sing the first four lines for several hours, over and over again. The frustration of this culminated in this scream, the pitch of which Dickinson has not managed to re-create live since the early days, which may possibly be an influence to the using of the death growl singing technique of later death metal and groove metal vocalists
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The Number Of The Beast
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Submitted By: Big D
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The song is about a man who is wandering alone and happens upon a portion of Hell on Earth, with people performing Satanic rituals and sacrifices. At first, he is disgusted and decides to report it to law enforcement, but eventually becomes entranced by the ordeal and decides to join in.
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The Number Of The Beast
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Submitted By: Big D
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The band had asked the famous horror films actor Vincent Price to read the intro text. However, according to Bruce, Price refused to do it for anything less than £25,000. They had heard of someone who read ghost stories at the Capitol radio station and got him to do it. The man was a theatre actor who had no interest in Maiden, but they asked him to put on a Vincent Price kind of voice.
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The Number Of The Beast
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Submitted By: Big D
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The original music video featured the band performing the song, interspersed with clips from various horror films including Godzilla. The Crimson Ghost - used as a logo by The Misfits - also appears early in the video, and there is another reference to The Misfits later in the video, when the monster from The Angry Red Planet appears (The Misfits used the monster on the cover of their album Walk Among Us). A later video (available on the Visions of the Beast DVD), animated by Camp Chaos, replaced the film clips and the dancing couple with Flash animation of Bruce (acting as a priest) and Eddie re-enacting scenes from The Exorcist.
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The Number Of The Beast
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Submitted By: Big D
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This song was featured on the video game Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 and is playable in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock as a master track.
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The Number Of The Beast
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Submitted By: Big D
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The song, being the title number for the 1982 album was a prominent target of critics during a time when Maiden were accused of being a Satanic group. Much of the controversy is believed to have originated due to the prominence of the number 666 in the song's repeating chorus.
Maiden took a swing at their critics in the follow-up album Piece of Mind which features a backmasked message in the beginning of the song Still Life which, when played backwards translates as a very drunk Nicko McBrain doing an impression of Idi Amin Dada (stating "What ho said the t'ing with the three "bonce", do not meddle with things you don't understand"), followed by a belch.
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The Number Of The Beast
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Submitted By: Big D
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Before being Iron Maiden's drummer, McBrain was the Devil on the Number of the Beast videoclip. When the music video was first shown on MTV, Eddie's appearance at the end was edited out after complaints from frightened viewers.
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The Trooper
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Submitted By: Big D
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The music video features clips of the charge from the 1936 film The Charge of the Light Brigade, which was controversial due to the deaths of 200 horses and an actor during filming. On the Visions of the Beast DVD, a newer version of the video replaces the film footage with Flash animation by Camp Chaos. In the animation, Eddie - dressed in 19th Century British uniform and wielding two sabers - battles multiples caricatures of George Bush, Al Gore and Tipper Gore in a parody of the 2000 US presidential election. At one point, Tipper Gore paints 'RATED X' on a cannonball; this is a mocking reference to Tipper's involvement in the Parents Music Resource Center which attempted to add warning labels to various records - many of them heavy metal - that they deemed inappropriate.
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The Trooper
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Submitted By: Big D
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The song is about the Battle of Balaclava in 1854 during the Crimean War, and is at least partially based upon Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade", taking the viewpoint of one of the slain troopers, who, in the coverart, is perceived as a bald Eddie.
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The Trooper
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Submitted By: Big D
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Lead singer Bruce Dickinson introduced the song in the Rock in Rio (Brazil, 2001) concert by quoting some lines of the poem written by Alfred Lord Tennyson: "Into the valley of death, rode the six hundred.... Cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them, volleyed and thundered, 'The Trooper'". Usually, Dickinson waves a British flag during the song (sometimes a flag different from the British), but on the last few tours he has also worn an authentic-looking red tunic.
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