Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son  by Iron Maiden

Iron Maiden choose the symbolic title Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son for their seventh album. Its sound completes the change that had begun with the previous record, Somewhere In Time. The idea for the album came to Steve Harris after he read Orson Scott Card’s book “Seventh Son”. The album impresses with its cover, which is yet another work by designer Derek Riggs, who has worked on the majority of Iron Maiden’s covers. The band asked him to prepare "something surreal and bloodily strange".

The band is now at the top of the "heavy music" scene and leads the way in metal as to where things should go. This is because the album in question - perhaps - establishes the term progressive metal, which in the next decade will be one of the dominant subgenres of heavy metal. At the time of its release, however, a large portion of the band's fans were disappointed by the new sound that their beloved band was promoting.

Of course, Martin Birch was in production once again. The album reached No.1 in Britain. Sales of the album in the U.S.A. have reached 500,000 copies. The first single, Can I Play With Madness?, reached No.3 on the UK singles chart, and at that moment in time, it was the highest position any of their singles had achieved in their homeland.