“On This Battlefield, No One Wins”: Iron Maiden’s Construction of War, Morality, and the Sound of Evil in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal

1. Introduction

“You’ll take my life but I’ll take yours too”1

 – The opening line of Iron Maiden’s The Trooper (1983) encapsulates the band’s commitment to dramatising war as a site of fatal symmetry, moral ambiguity, and existential violence. As key figures in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM), Iron Maiden constructed an aesthetic of “evil” not simply through lyrical themes or visual iconography, but through music itself: rhythm, harmony, and form operate as symbolic agents of chaos, destruction, and judgment. This essay examines how Iron Maiden sonically constructs war as a form of evil and how that construction, both musical and thematic, contributed to the NWOBHM’s aesthetic legacy and the globalisation of heavy metal.

While heavy metal’s lyrical and visual engagement with themes of violence and rebellion has attracted some scholarly attention, the specific ways in which musical form and texture convey ethical critique remain comparatively underexplored. As Brown and Griffin note, heavy metal has been “the most consistently successful form of rock music and the most marginalized within the discourse of institutionalized rock culture,”2 often treated with critical disdain rather than serious inquiry. Scholars Schott and Brackett provide frameworks for reading metal as culturally subversive, while — though not peer-reviewd — master’s theses such as Eeva Saarinen’s offer detailed case studies of how bands like Iron Maiden negotiate the justification and condemnation of war. This essay builds on and synthesises these perspectives with close musical analysis, contributing an original reading of war as a sonic and symbolic construct of evil within Iron Maiden’s music.

War has long been embedded in metal as a structural and symbolic concern. In her analysis of metal lyrics, Saarinen notes that depictions of war often reveal a “moral evaluation of violence”3 and tend to frame conflict as a tragic inevitability or systemic failure.4 For Iron Maiden, this framing is intensified by musical choices—galloping triplet rhythms, Aeolian modal harmony, and layered, dissonant guitar textures—that heighten the sense of relentlessness and grandeur. This “heaviness,” Jason Miller argues, is not merely sonic but philosophical, embodying “radically different, sometimes incompatible, musical properties” that destabilise resolution.5 During the 1980s Satanic Panic in the United States, Iron Maiden were cited among bands accused of glorifying death, destruction, and Satanism.6 As John Brackett observes, such accusations reflected broader anxieties about youth culture, moral decay, and the breakdown of religious authority.7

By aligning the musical language of metal with the ethical and mythological weight of war, Iron Maiden shaped a global sonic aesthetic of evil—one that transcended national context and embedded itself in the fabric of modern popular music.

2. War in Iron Maiden

Iron Maiden’s depictions of historical warfare—particularly in The Trooper and Paschendale (2003)—serve as more than dramatic retellings; they stage British military history as a site of both patriotic spectacle and existential collapse. Drawing from the Crimean War and the First World War respectively, these songs use specific historical events not to glorify combat, but to expose its ideological and moral contradictions. 

Based on the Gulf War,8 in Afraid to Shoot Strangers (1992), the band explores the psychological tension of soldiers confronting moral uncertainty:

“God let us go now and finish what’s to be done

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth…”9

The echo of the Lord’s Prayer collapses the boundary between state violence and divine sanction. War here becomes a sacrament, cloaked in theological fatalism. The soldier’s moral conflict—“I try to visualise the horror that will lay ahead”10—is overridden by an inherited ideological script. As Thomas Talbott notes, theological fatalism frames human actions as predetermined, even divinely authorised, undermining individual agency.11

By combining martial imagery with lyrics that emphasise futility and death, and by linking these performances to British iconography,12 Bruce Dickinson famously waves the Union Jack on stage during The Trooper (see figure 1), the band constructs a complex portrayal of nationalism that is simultaneously enacted and undermined. In this sense, Iron Maiden transforms national myth into an ironic staging of imperial nostalgia, revealing a hollowness within heroism.13

Figure 1. Theo Wargo, “Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden during OZZFEST 2005 at the PNC Arts Center in Holmdel – July 26, 2005,” photograph, WireImage/Getty Images, accessed April 26, 2025, https://www.imdb.com/es-es/gallery/rg972593664/mediaviewer/rm2806225664/.

Yet its lyrics undermine this display: 

“On this battlefield no one wins,” 14

The narrator laments, exposing the senselessness of war even as it is performed as national myth.15 This disjunction between lyrical content and performance gestures toward an ironic staging of imperial nostalgia.16

Paschendale17 intensifies this critique. Drawing on World War I imagery and evoking the anonymous soldier’s grave, it offers a mournful vision of mechanised death. Bruce Dickinson has paired the song with readings of Wilfred Owen, linking the track explicitly to Britain’s poetic tradition of war remembrance.18 In Paschendale the use of Wilfred Owen’s war poetry, paired with mournful instrumentation and imagery-rich lyrics, challenges triumphalist readings of British military history and critiques the nationalist glorification of death in service of empire:

“The bodies of ours and our foes

The sea of death it overflows

In no man’s land, God only knows

Into jaws of death we go”.19

Iron Maiden also critiques modern militarism. In 2 Minutes to Midnight (1984), the Cold War’s apocalyptic dread is portrayed through grotesque satire:20 

“We oil the jaws of the war machine and feed it with our babies.”21

Here, war is stripped of heroism, rendered instead as an ethical collapse and systemic atrocity. Unlike the band’s historical retrospectives,22 this track directly targets contemporary political structures through a rare commentary, implicating global powers in the manufacture of mass death. The single’s cover art visually reinforces these themes, depicting Eddie, the Band’s ever-changing mascot, as a grimacing, militarised executioner set against a backdrop of nuclear devastation—a symbolic personification of Cold War annihilation (see figure 2).

Figure 2. Derek Riggs, cover art for Iron Maiden, “2 Minutes to Midnight.” 12” single, EMI Records, 1984.

Significantly, the surrounding flags—shown at half-mast—belong to nations engaged in active conflicts during the 1980s, including the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Their lowering symbolises collective mourning for global militarism and highlights the moral degradation of national pride during the Cold War era.23

Through such songs, Maiden constructs war as a vehicle for exploring theological and moral evil, rooted in British history yet resonating globally. These narratives resist simple glorification, blending heroic myth with condemnation, and preparing the ground for war’s sonic realisation.

3. Framing War as a Form of Evil

While Iron Maiden’s historical narratives highlight the ideological contradictions of national pride, Afraid to Shoot Strangers shifts focus to the systemic mechanisms of modern warfare. The song presents the soldier’s internal crisis as a critique of how military obedience collides with ethical uncertainty. This tension echoes debates within international law, particularly the Geneva Conventions, which attempt to civilise war through regulation, but often fail to address its moral realities. As Robin May Schott notes, the legal frameworks that attempt to civilise warfare often obscure its persistent moral failures.24 It is precisely this disjunction that Maiden explores. Through its subdued melodic contours and the accompanying video’s images of training and deployment, the song frames war not as heroic combat but as legalised, routinised atrocity—demonstrating the band’s broader engagement with heavy metal’s aesthetics of transgression, a genre “acknowledged as transgressive by fans and critics alike” and fundamentally “counter to the mainstream.”25

3.1. “Trying to visualise the horrors that will lay ahead…”: Crimes, Conventions, and Systemic Violence

Iron Maiden’s Afraid to Shoot Strangers presents a somber meditation on the ethical paralysis induced by systemic warfare. The lyrics expose a soldier’s psychological torment: 

“Lying awake at night, I wipe the sweat from my brow

But it’s not the fear, ’cause I’d rather go now

Trying to visualize the horrors that will lay ahead

The desert sand mound a burial ground“26

These lines evoke the soldier’s internal struggle between obedience and moral doubt, a tension explicitly governed by the frameworks of international law, such as the Geneva Conventions. While the Conventions aim to regulate the conduct of war by protecting civilians and restricting methods of violence,27 the lived reality of combat often reveals profound ethical contradictions. As Schott argues, “violence can be legitimate without being just,” highlighting how legal permission frequently masks moral failure.28

The Afraid to Shoot Strangers music video reinforces this critique, depicting scenes of soldiers training and mobilising within military bases (see Figure 3), evoking the normalisation of violence within state institutions. Through both sound and image, Maiden presents war as a systemic atrocity: legally sanctioned, yet spiritually corrosive.

Figure 3. Iron Maiden. “Afraid to Shoot Strangers.” Fear of the Dark. EMI Records, 1992. Music video, 5:19. YouTube. Accessed April 28, 2025. https://youtu.be/0c9iYZdsZMM.

3.2. “You’ll Take My Life But I’ll Take Yours Too”: Philosophical and Ethical Dimensions

While Afraid to Shoot Strangers critiques systemic violence, The Trooper examines the philosophical collapse of moral clarity on the battlefield. Based on the Charge of the Light Brigade (see Figure 4), the song frames combat as inevitable, mutual destruction: 

“You’ll take my life, but I’ll take yours too

You’ll fire your musket, but I’ll run you through

So when you’re waiting for the next attack

You’d better stand, there’s no turning back” 29

These lyrics epitomise the cyclical futility of armed conflict, undermining romanticised notions of battlefield heroism.30 Just War Theory posits that war can be morally legitimate only if it satisfies strict conditions such as proportionality, right intention, and just cause.31 However, Iron Maiden’s depiction of war in The Trooper leaves little room for these ideals. The narrator advances inexorably towards death—

“The bugle sounds, the charge begins

But on this battlefield, no one wins

The smell of acrid smoke and horses’ breath

As I plunge into a certain death32

—suggesting an absence of rational purpose beyond obedience. Eeva Saarinen observes that many heavy metal narratives portray soldiers as victims of political forces beyond their control,33 a reading The Trooper exemplifies. In presenting the battlefield as an arena of indiscriminate slaughter rather than righteous action, Iron Maiden destabilises traditional frameworks for moral warfare.

Figure 4. Iron Maiden. “The Trooper.” Piece of Mind. EMI Records, 1983. Music video, 0.01. YouTube. Accessed May 10, 2025. https://youtu.be/X4bgXH3sJ2Q?si=fgXmN9DZSf-UZwSD. 

3.3. “Woe to You, Oh Earth and Sea…”: Cosmic and Moral Significance

Beyond philosophical critiques, Iron Maiden extends their exploration of war into the realm of cosmic evil. The Number of the Beast (1982) opens with a chilling invocation from the Book of Revelation (12:12-13, 13:18): 

“Woe to you, oh earth and sea

For the Devil sends the beast with wrath

Because he knows the time is short

Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast

For it is a human number

Its number is six hundred and sixty-six“34

In this narrative, war and destruction are not the result of political decisions, but manifestations of supernatural, inevitable doom.

Lauro Meller notes that Iron Maiden often intertwine historical realities with mythological and theological frameworks to heighten the stakes of human conflict.35 In The Number of the Beast, violence is framed not as a human error but as part of an apocalyptic destiny: 

“Torches blazed and sacred chants were praised

As they start to cry, hands held to the sky.“36

Here, war becomes ritualised and mythologised, reinforcing the band’s portrayal of conflict as an existential and universal evil. Iron Maiden draws upon a lineage of apocalyptic thought that resonates through religious and popular culture by elevating war beyond a political form of evil into a mythic one. As previously explored, Afraid to Shoot Strangers also references these themes:

“God let us go now and finish what’s to be done

Thy Kingdom come, thy shall be done on earth”.37

Further underscoring the band’s, while perhaps unintentional, alignment with theological fatalism—where violence is not merely condoned but cast as inevitable, even divinely sanctioned, echoing the logic that “the future is already fixed in every detail and that no one has the power to act otherwise than he in fact does.”38

3.4 “The Ritual Has Begun”: Cultural Evil and the Metal Aesthetic

Although theological themes permeate Iron Maiden’s lyrics, their engagement with evil is ultimately aesthetic and cultural. Heavy metal’s long association with satanic imagery, particularly during the 1980s “Satanic Panic,”39  reflects not literal endorsement but symbolic transgression. As Helen Farley notes, album covers were “resplendent with demons” and themes of the occult were used primarily to shock rather than signify sincere belief—“teenage rebellion became as easy as buying a Black Sabbath record.”40 This aligns with John Brackett’s argument that bands like Iron Maiden were targeted because they challenged dominant moral frameworks, using shock aesthetics to expose cultural anxieties.41

Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible frames Satan not as a metaphysical entity but as a symbol of rebellion, individualism, and exposure of societal hypocrisies.42 Within this symbolic system, Maiden’s depictions of war serve as critiques of the illusions of honour, righteousness, and national glory. Songs like These Colours Don’t Run (2006)43 and The Longest Day (2006)44 stage war not as a noble struggle but as a tragic ritual, stripping away the comforting myths that traditionally justify violence.45 This resonates with LaVey’s assertion that “the victors write the history books — and glorify their cause and demonize the defeated,”46 suggesting that narratives of military heroism are constructed to sanctify violence after the fact. Through the sonic, visual, and narrative dimensions of their work, Iron Maiden embed war into heavy metal’s broader aesthetic of confronting, performing, and ritualising evil.

4. Sonic Construction of Evil – Rhythm, Harmony, and Musical Form

While Iron Maiden’s lyrics and iconography construct war as morally ambiguous and mythically charged, the band’s musical language reinforces this vision through sonic means. The NWOBHM soundscape is not simply an aesthetic background—it becomes a vital medium through which themes of fatalism, violence, and transgression are articulated.47 In particular, Iron Maiden’s rhythmic drive, modal harmony, and structural density work together to sonify the chaos and inevitability of conflict, contributing to a broader musical aesthetic of moral destabilisation.48 As found by Spracklen, “extreme metal music uses sonic violence and sensory overload to evoke a sense of transcendence and loss of control,” positioning sound itself as a ritualised experience of chaos and disorientation that disrupts normative emotional responses and frames of meaning.49 

4.1. Rhythm:

One of the “trademark”50 features of Iron Maiden’s sound is the “galloping” rhythm, typically based on driving triplets or swung sixteenth notes (see Figure 5), “which by 1988, had become a heavy metal trope,”51 Heard in The Trooper and Aces High (1984),52 this rhythmic motif mimics the relentless forward motion of cavalry charge or mechanical assault, evoking a momentum that feels both exhilarating and uncontrollable.53 

Figure 5. Rhythmic transcription of Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper.” Source: Wissam R. Abboud, The Musical Language of Heavy Metal: A Study of Form, Rhythm, Modes, and Harmonic Structure (MA thesis, Notre Dame University-Louaize, 2018), 53.

4.2. Harmony

Harmonically, Iron Maiden frequently employs Aeolian and Phrygian modal vocabularies—scales “widely used to color expressions of pain and lament.”54 These modal choices destabilise the tonal centre and resist harmonic closure. As Nicole Biamonte found in her study including Iron Maiden songs, “the positions of Phrygian and Locrian as the flatmost modes of major, as well as their semitones and tritone above the tonic, serve in these songs to enhance the characteristically dark affect of heavy metal.”55 In Afraid to Shoot Strangers, shifting modal inflections reinforce the soldier’s existential ambivalence, never allowing the listener to settle. 2 Minutes to Midnight begins with grinding, dissonant power chords that announce violence in sound before it appears in words, marking tonal disturbance as a stand-in for geopolitical horror.56

4.3. Structure

Formally, Iron Maiden structures their songs to delay catharsis. Aces High, in particular, resists conventional verse-chorus form through tempo changes, alternating clean and distorted textures, and contrasting vocal deliveries.57 These episodic structures map directly onto the psychological fragmentation of the narrator, reinforcing the idea that war disorients identity and moral logic.

Even timbre and texture serve expressive functions. Twin guitar leads over Aeolian progressions, as is tradition in the NWOBHM,58  generate a sense of heightened drama, while Dickinson’s operatic vocals59 intensify themes of conflict and ritual.60 In The Number of the Beast, a spoken prophecy from Revelation opens over eerie ambiance, followed by an explosive riff in 5/4 that collapses into fast 4/4—a rhythmic ritual of apocalypse. This metric instability signals the summoning of evil not only lyrically, but musically, positioning rhythm as both omen and assault.61

These sonic strategies are not ornament—they are ideological. Iron Maiden’s musical textures collapse aesthetic distance and immerse the listener in war’s affective reality. Through rhythm, harmony, and form, the band constructs an aural theatre of moral disorder, in which evil is neither abstract nor purely narrative—it is felt. This musicality enacts the band’s broader critique of warfare and aligns them with heavy metal’s aesthetic of symbolic, theological, and existential transgression.62

5. NWOBHM & Perceptions of Evil

Iron Maiden’s ambivalent portrayal of war—neither triumphalist nor pacifist—has left a lasting mark on heavy metal’s aesthetic and ideological development. Within the NWOBHM, their fusion of historical narrative, theological imagery, and musical intensity established a blueprint for articulating evil as complex, symbolic, and systemic.63 This legacy shaped later subgenres in distinct but interconnected ways. In this context, the broader metal genre has raised profound moral questions: if Satanism is being used to fight evil, could it become the ‘good’? Can one evil fight another evil? And can these bands, still small in the grand scheme of popular culture, make an impact on such entrenched institutions?64

Thrash metal bands such as Metallica and Slayer adopted Iron Maiden’s emphasis on moral ambiguity and channelled it into more explicit political critique.65 Tracks like Slayer’s Mandatory Suicide or Metallica’s One amplify Maiden’s vision of mechanised violence, adding sonic aggression and lyrical urgency to protest war’s dehumanising effects.66 Power metal, by contrast, evolved Maiden’s mythic framing of conflict, transforming war into a site of heroic destiny. Bands like Sabaton or Blind Guardian retained Maiden’s epic musical scope but often reimagined war as a moral crucible rather than a site of collapse.67 In black metal, the apocalyptic and anti-theistic undercurrents of The Number of the Beast find resonance in the genre’s occult aesthetics, where cosmic violence is not condemned but ritualised.68

Across these styles, Iron Maiden’s influence is not merely musical but philosophical. Their construction of war as an existential, mythic, and sonic evil helped define heavy metal’s cultural image as morally subversive, “amongst other things, challenging ways to respond to the boundaries of the body…to the limits of morality.”69 Crucially, this association does not arise from glorification but from deep engagement with repressed cultural anxieties—violence, guilt, justice, and the limits of human meaning. However, as Karl Spracklen argues, Iron Maiden also “construct hegemonic masculinity and Britishness from the mythic milieu… serving its hegemonic interest, whether they are conscious of that fact or not.”70 This suggests that while their work may challenge moral boundaries, it can also reinforce imperial and gendered ideologies, complicating any straightforward reading of their music as purely subversive.

6. Conclusion

Iron Maiden’s portrayal of war as evil unfolds across legal, ethical, mythological, and sonic registers. Their multi-dimensional construction destabilises simple readings of violence and embeds heavy metal with a powerful symbolic language. By confronting uncomfortable truths rather than avoiding them, Iron Maiden not only shaped NWOBHM’s aesthetic legacy but also transformed how war—and evil—are imagined in modern popular culture.

Footnotes:

  1.  Iron Maiden, The Trooper, on Piece of Mind, EMI Records, 1983. ↩︎
  2.  Andy R. Brown and Christine Griffin, “‘A Cockroach Preserved in Amber’: The Significance of Class in Critics’ Representations of Heavy Metal Music and its Fans,” The Sociological Review 62, no. 4 (2014): 724, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12181.  ↩︎
  3.  Eeva Saarinen, “From War Pigs to Unsung Heroes: The Criticism and Justification of War in Metal Lyrics” (MA thesis, University of Turku, 2013), 33, https://www.utupub.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/90867/saarinen2013gradu.pdf?sequence=2.  ↩︎
  4.  Ibid., 59. ↩︎
  5.  Jason Miller, “What Makes Heavy Metal ‘Heavy’?,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 80, no. 1 (2022): 71, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpab065.  ↩︎
  6.  John Brackett, “Satan, Subliminals, and Suicide: The Formation and Development of an Antirock Discourse in the United States during the 1980s,” American Music 36, no. 3 (2018): 272, https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.36.3.0271.  ↩︎
  7.  Ibid., 288. ↩︎
  8.  Iron Maiden Bulgaria, “Afraid to Shoot Strangers,” Iron Maiden Bulgaria, accessed May 10, 2025, https://www.ironmaiden-bg.com/web/index.php/fear-of-the-dark-songs-en/2277-afraid-to-shoot-strangers-song-info-en.  ↩︎
  9.  Iron Maiden, Afraid to Shoot Strangers, on Fear of the Dark, EMI Records, 1992. ↩︎
  10.  Ibid. ↩︎
  11.  Thomas Talbott, “Theological Fatalism and the Problem of Moral Responsibility,” Religious Studies 29, no. 1 (1993): 63, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412500015405. ↩︎
  12.  Hannu Mäkinen, The Changing Image of War according to the Lyrics and Imagery Used by Iron Maiden (Pro Gradu thesis, University of Oulu, 2014), 64, https://oulurepo.oulu.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/39716/nbnfioulu-201405291597.pdf?sequence=1.  ↩︎
  13.  Arturo Mora-Rioja, “‘We Are the Dead’: The War Poets, Metal Music and Chaos Control,” Metal Music Studies 7, no. 2 (2021): 300-301, https://doi.org/10.1386/mms_00050_1.  ↩︎
  14.  Iron Maiden, The Trooper. ↩︎
  15.  Caitlin McAlister, Heavy Metal Historiography: Historical Subject Matter in the Music of Iron Maiden (MA thesis, Penn State University, 2020), 27-28, https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/17728cxm2093.  ↩︎
  16.  Karl Spracklen, Metal Music and the Re-Imagining of Masculinity, Place, Race and Nation (Bingley: Emerald Publishing, 2020), 68. ↩︎
  17.  Iron Maiden, Paschendale, on Dance of Death, EMI Records, 2003. ↩︎
  18.  Arturo Mora-Rioja, “‘We Are the Dead’: The War Poets, Metal Music and Chaos Control,” Metal Music Studies 7, no. 2 (2021): 300, ↩︎
  19.  Iron Maiden, Paschendale. ↩︎
  20.  Mäkinen, The Changing Image of War, 25. ↩︎
  21.  Iron Maiden, 2 Minutes to Midnight, on Powerslave, EMI Records, 1984. ↩︎
  22.  Lauro Meller, “Historical Themes in Iron Maiden Songs (Part I): From the Cavemen to the Vikings,” Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Canção 3 (January-June 2013): 198-204, https://rbec.ect.ufrn.br/data/_uploaded/artigo/N3/RBEC_N3_A14.pdf. ; Lauro Meller, “Historical Themes in Iron Maiden Songs (Part II): From the Inquisition to the Second World War,” Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Canção 4 (July-December 2013): 190–201, https://rbec.ect.ufrn.br/data/_uploaded/artigo/N4/RBEC_N4_A14.pdf.  ↩︎
  23.  Mäkinen, The Changing Image of War, 64. ↩︎
  24.  Robin May Schott, “Just War and the Problem of Evil,” Hypatia 23, no. 2 (2008): 123, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2008.tb01189.x.  ↩︎
  25.  Esther A. Clinton, review of Heavy Metal: Controversies and Countercultures, edited by Titus Hjelm, Keith Kahn-Harris, and Mark LeVine, Volume! La revue des musiques populaires 9, no. 2 (2012): 233, https://doi.org/10.4000/volume.3481. ↩︎
  26.  Iron Maiden, Afraid to Shoot Strangers. ↩︎
  27.  Geneva Conventions, August 12, 1949, 75 U.N.T.S. ↩︎
  28.  Schott, “Just War and the Problem of Evil,” 123. ↩︎
  29.  Iron Maiden, The Trooper. ↩︎
  30.  Oleg Smirnov, Holly Arrow, Douglas Kennett, and John Orbell, “‘Heroism’ in Warfare,” The Journal of Politics 69, no. 4 (2007): 928, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00599.x. ↩︎
  31.  Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 21-22. ↩︎
  32.  Iron Maiden, The Trooper. ↩︎
  33.  Saarinen, From War Pigs to Unsung Heroes, 34-25. ↩︎
  34.  Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast, on The Number of the Beast, EMI Records, 1982. ↩︎
  35.  Lauro Meller, “Historical Themes in Iron Maiden Songs (Part II): From the Inquisition to the Second World War,” 195. ↩︎
  36.  Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast. ↩︎
  37.  Iron Maiden, Afraid to Shoot Strangers. ↩︎
  38.  Talbott, “Theological Fatalism and the Problem of Moral Responsibility,” 63, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412500015405. ↩︎
  39.  Jeffrey S. Victor, Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend (Chicago: Open Court, 1993),162-163. ↩︎
  40.  Helen Farley, Demons, Devils and Witches: The Occult in Heavy Metal Music, in Demons in the World Today, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2009), 82-83. ↩︎
  41. John Brackett, “Satan, Subliminals, and Suicide: The Formation and Development of an Antirock Discourse in the United States during the 1980s,” American Music 36, no. 3 (2018): 285. ↩︎
  42.  Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible (New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 1992), 30-33. ↩︎
  43.  Iron Maiden, These Colours Don’t Run, on Virtual XI, EMI Records, 1998. ↩︎
  44.  Iron Maiden, The Longest Day, on A Matter of Life and Death, EMI Records, 2006. ↩︎
  45.  Peter Elliott, “A Matter of Life and Death: Iron Maiden’s Religio-Political Critique,” Metal Music Studies 4, no. 2 (2018): 295, https://doi.org/10.1386/mms.4.2.293_1.  ↩︎
  46.  Ibid., 35. ↩︎
  47.  Robert McParland, Myth and Magic in Heavy Metal Music (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2018), 47 ↩︎
  48.  McAlister, Heavy Metal Historiography: Historical Subject Matter in the Music of Iron Maiden, 20-23 ↩︎
  49.  Karl Spracklen, “‘It’s a Dirty, Soothing Secret Magic’: Individualism and Spirituality in New Age and Extreme Metal Music Cultures,” in Popular Music and Society 31, no. 1 (2008): 74. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143018000697. ;  Meller, “Historical Themes in Iron Maiden Songs (Part II): From the Inquisition to the Second World War,” 199. ↩︎
  50.  Wissam R. Abboud, The Musical Language of Heavy Metal: A Study of Form, Rhythm, Modes, and Harmonic Structure (MA thesis, Notre Dame University-Louaize, 2018), 53. http://ir.ndu.edu.lb/123456789/1210.  ↩︎
  51.  Nolan Stolz, Experiencing Black Sabbath: A Listener’s Companion (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 142. ↩︎
  52.  Iron Maiden, Aces High, on Powerslave, EMI Records, 1984. ↩︎
  53.  Meller, “Historical Themes in Iron Maiden Songs (Part II): From the Inquisition to the Second World War,” 199. ↩︎
  54.  Richard W. Young Jr., Modes in Heavy Metal Music (Master’s thesis, Stephen F. Austin State University, 2024), 33, https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/etds/539.  ↩︎
  55.  Nicole Biamonte, Modal Function in Rock and Heavy Metal Music, in L’analyse musicale aujourd’hui, ed. Mondher Ayari, Jean-Michel Bardez, and Xavier Hascher (Université de Strasbourg, 2012), 10, https://www.academia.edu/1826046/Modal_Function_in_Rock_and_Heavy_Metal_Music.  ↩︎
  56.  Karl Spracklen, “‘Yours is the Earth and Everything That’s in It, and – Which Is More – You’ll Be a Man, My Son’: Myths of British Masculinity and Britishness in the Construction and Reception of Iron Maiden,” Metal Music Studies 3, no. 3 (2017): 413, https://doi.org/10.1386/mms.3.3.405_1.  ↩︎
  57.  Stephen S. Hudson, “Compound AABA Form and Style Distinction in Heavy Metal,” Music Theory Online 27, no. 1 (2021), https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.27.1.5.  ↩︎
  58.  Jamie Boddington Jordan and Jan-Peter Herbst, “Harmonic Structures in Twenty-First-Century Metal Music: A Harmonic Analysis of Five Major Metal Genres,” Metal Music Studies 9, no. 1 (March 2023): 28, https://doi.org/10.1386/mms_00093_1.  ↩︎
  59.  Alexsandro R. Meireles and Beatriz Raposo de Medeiros, “Acoustic Analysis of Voice Quality in Iron Maiden’s Songs” (paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody, Poznań, Poland, June 2018), https://doi.org/10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018-4.  ↩︎
  60.  Anastasia Siopsi, “Images of War in Opera,” Open Journal for Studies in History 3, no. 2 (2020): 25-34, https://doi.org/10.32591/coas.ojsh.0302.01025s.  ↩︎
  61.  Farley, Demons, Devils and Witches: The Occult in Heavy Metal Music, 95-96 ↩︎
  62.  Nicolas Bénard, “War Images in Metal Music: Between Fascination and Denunciation,” Sociétés 117, no. 3 (2012): 115-116, https://doi.org/10.3917/soc.117.0113.  ↩︎
  63.  Jörg Scheller, “Apopcalypse: The Popularity of Heavy Metal as Heir to Apocalyptic Artifacts,” Arts 12, no. 3 (2023): 120, https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12030120.  ↩︎
  64.  Andrew Thomson, “Right Hand Up, Left Hand Down: The New Satanists of Rock n’ Roll, Evil and the Underground War on the Abject,” Metal Music Studies 7, no. 1 (2020):49, https://doi.org/10.1386/mms_00031_1.  ↩︎
  65.  Petr Kocina, “The Good, the Bad and Metallica: Philosophical Reflections on the Concept of Evil in the Music of One Heavy Metal Band.” Ars Pro Toto – Science & Art Journal 1, (2021): 20, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354402567.  ↩︎
  66.  Ibid. ↩︎
  67.  Reinhard Kopanski, “‘Auschwitz Awaits’: Different Readings on Sabaton’s ‘The Final Solution’ (2010) and the Question of Irony,” Metal Music Studies 6, no. 3 (2020): 347, https://doi.org/10.1386/mms_00022_1.  ↩︎
  68.  Michelle Phillipov, “Extreme Music for Extreme People? Norwegian Black Metal and Transcendent Violence,” in Heavy Metal: Controversies and Countercultures, ed. Titus Hjelm, Keith Kahn-Harris, and Mark LeVine (Sheffield: Equinox, 2013), 155. ↩︎
  69.  Keith Kahn-Harris, “Engaging with Absence: Why Is the Holocaust a ‘Problem’ for Metal?” Metal Music Studies 6, no. 3 (2020):411, https://doi.org/10.1386/mms_00025_1.  ↩︎
  70.  Spracklen, “‘Yours is the Earth and Everything That’s in It, and – Which Is More – You’ll Be a Man, My Son’: Myths of British Masculinity and Britishness in the Construction and Reception of Iron Maiden,” 416. ↩︎

Figures:

Figure 1. Theo Wargo, “Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden during OZZFEST 2005 at the PNC Arts Center in Holmdel – July 26, 2005.” Photograph. WireImage/Getty Images. Accessed April 26, 2025. https://www.imdb.com/es-es/gallery/rg972593664/mediaviewer/rm2806225664/.

Figure 2. Derek Riggs, cover art for Iron Maiden, 2 Minutes to Midnight, 12″ single, EMI Records, 1984.

Figure 3. Iron Maiden. “Afraid to Shoot Strangers.” Fear of the Dark. EMI Records, 1992. Music video, 5:20. YouTube. Accessed April 28, 2025. https://youtu.be/0c9iYZdsZMM.​

Figure 4. Iron Maiden. “The Trooper.” Piece of Mind. EMI Records, 1983. Music video, 0.01. YouTube. Accessed May 10, 2025. https://youtu.be/X4bgXH3sJ2Q?si=fgXmN9DZSf-UZwSD. 

Figure 5. Rhythmic transcription of Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper.” Source: Wissam R. Abboud, The Musical Language of Heavy Metal: A Study of Form, Rhythm, Modes, and Harmonic Structure (MA thesis, Notre Dame University-Louaize, 2018), 53. http://ir.ndu.edu.lb/123456789/1210. 

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