Iron Maiden

Emerging during the heyday of punk, Iron Maiden launched a new wave of British heavy metal and remained beloved by headbangers worldwide. The band's sonic trademarks were its harmony guitars, musical complexity and Bruce Dickinson's throat-tearing vocals, and had its visual trademark in Eddie, the murderous cartoon monster who appeared on nearly every album cover. Formed in 1975 by bassist and composer Steve Harris, the band went through the first of many rounds of personnel changes before making its self-titled debut album in 1980. Though its lead singer Paul D'Anno would be short-lived, the familiar Maiden sound was largely in place: They equaled the speed and ferocity of punk while borrowing from Yes' grandeur and Black Sabbath's heavy riffage. Dickinson's arrival on the third album, the UK chart-topper The Number of the Beast launched the band's classic era. Their music got ever more ambitious through the '80s, as they produced epic tracks like a 14-minute adaptation of the Coleridge poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Their dabbling in occult lyrical themes, along with those Eddie covers, also made the band a target in the PMRC hearings, to their fans' delight. At the height of its '80s popularity Iron Maiden played to 107,000 fans at the Monsters of Rock festival in Leicestershire, England's Donington Park, headlining over Kiss and Guns 'n' Roses. A fallout with the band led to Dickinson's departure in 1993 and a few lean years, as the fanbase never fully warmed to his replacement, ex-Wolfsbane frontman Blaze Bayley. With Dickinson's reinstatement in 1999 the band, now including three lead guitarists, began a new era of commercial success, building tours around new material along with the '80s favorites. While including some of the longest and most complex tracks of their career, the 2010 album The Final Frontier became the best seller in their history. That album's title, and the band's oft-stated intention to stop after 15 studio albums, led fans to assume it was Iron Maiden's last. But they returned after a short break, during which Dickinson was successfully treated for a cancerous growth on his tongue. Musical ambitions still ran high with 2015 bringing Iron Maiden's first studio double album, The Book of Souls, making heavy use of piano and orchestration. Coming into its fifth decade, the band still included three members of its best-known lineup with Dickinson, guitarist Dave Murray and founder Steve Harris.