Iron Maiden: Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son (2015 Black Vinyl Remasters)

Parlophone Records (BMG/INgrooves Music Group for North America) will follow the 2012/13 IRON MAIDEN vinyl picture disc reissues of the first eight IRON MAIDEN albums, which spanned the 1980s, with brand new pressings of the albums in heavyweight 180-gram black vinyl.

The release of these high-quality, black vinyl records offers optimum choice to fans who would like to own a piece of MAIDEN‘s authentic 1980s vinyl sound, or for those simply wanting to rediscover this much loved, iconic format.

Released in replica artwork packaging, they are sure to become a must-have item for fans, collectors and anyone who missed out first time round. The albums will also be cut from the original analogue master tapes and packaged in identical artwork to the initial 1980s releases.

It was on the sunny side of the mid-80s that Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson was caught on camera talking to an aspiring metal musician in Poland with dreams of incorporating synths into his sound.

“You can’t play heavy metal with synthesizers,” he quickly retorted, scoffing at the very notion of incorporating the same instrument his British counterparts in pop and new wave had been heavily implementing at the time.

For the metal legends’ next album Somewhere in Time, however, guitarists Adrian Smith and Dave Murray, along with bassist Steve Harris, all began to incorporate synth modulators into their instruments to mirror the 1986 LP’s futuristic overtones — to a mixed reception from fans and critics alike.

Two years later, Maiden would ignore the jeers and double down on the digital experiments with their seventh album Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, released 30 years ago on April 11, 1988. It was the first time we heard actual keyboards on a studio recording of theirs, used to supplement the record’s concept, whose roots derived from Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi novel Seventh Son, which Harris had been reading at the time. And while some metal purists in the press accused the group of becoming Genesis, Seventh Son was largely celebrated as a high watermark in the Iron Maiden lexicon; its lean into progressive rock served as the basis for some of the most revered songs in the band’s canon like “The Clairvoyant,” “Moonchild,” “Can I Play With Madness” and the album’s epic title cut.

For some, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son is the definitive Iron Maiden LP, flanked by that memorable Derek Riggs cover art depicting the group’s sinister zombie mascot Eddie as a cyborg floating above a lake of ice in an apparent allusion to the ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno. And 30 years later, Mick Wall’s prediction that it will be “will eventually be hailed alongside such past milestones as Tommy, Tubular Bells andDark Side of the Moon” in the April 11, 1988 edition of British metal magazine Kerrang has come closer to fruition.