Elsewhere, the band offers the first of many instrumentals with "Transylvania," introduces the recurring title character of "Charlotte the Harlot," and reimagines Judas Priest's "Beyond the Realms of Death" with the "ballad" "Remember Tomorrow," which starts out soft but closes with a speed-freak guitar section. The flasher tale "Prowler," one of the band's more enduring numbers, is in the same vein, but ups the instrumental complexity, while the title track still remains a concert staple. version but added to subsequent reissues), made the lower reaches of the British singles charts.
Two of the simpler, punkier rockers, "Running Free" and "Sanctuary" (the latter left off the U.K. The seven-minute "Phantom of the Opera" is a landmark, the band's earliest progressive epic and still among its best with its ambitious fusion of musical styles, its multi-sectioned construction, and the literary retelling of the lyrics, it seemed to encapsulate all the promise of both the band and the NWOBHM. Add it all up, and Iron Maiden performs the neat trick of reconciling two genres seemingly antithetical to one another, using post- Priest heavy metal as the meeting ground. The lyrics have similarly high-flying aspirations, spinning first-person stories and character sketches with a flair for the seedy and the grotesque. When Murray and Stratton harmonize their leads, they outdo even Priest's legendary tandem in terms of pure speed. Their musicianship was already light years beyond punk, with complicated instrumental passages between guitarists Dave Murray and Dennis Stratton and bassist Steve Harris. Compositionally, even their shortest and most straightforward songs featured abrupt changes in tempo and feel. On the other hand, Maiden had all the creative ambition of a prog rock band. production, the revved-up velocities, and the vocals of rough-and-ready growler Paul Di'Anno, who looked and sounded not like a metal god, but rather a short-haired street tough. On the one hand, Maiden was clearly drawing from elements of punk rock - the raw D.I.Y. Top Five and establishing them as an outfit with the talent to build on Judas Priest's late-'70s innovations. That year also saw important albums from Motörhead, Saxon, and Angel Witch, but Iron Maiden vaulted its creators to the head of the NWOBHM pack, reaching the U.K. Often overlooked and overshadowed by the glorious Bruce Dickinson years, it's easy to forget that Iron Maiden was itself a game-changer when it appeared on the scene in 1980. There may be no better place to hear how both punk and prog rock informed the New Wave of British Heavy Metal than Iron Maiden's self-titled debut.
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