Swaziland

I would have to say hallowed be thy name but there are plenty of others as well,whats your opinion?

Hallowed be thy name!! XD

He strutted about dressed as a Germanic warrior with the thundering music of Wagner in the background and melted the drawers of them until their blond pigtails curled up girlishly.

From favorite to least favorite:

Iron Maiden
Killers
The Number of the Beast
Piece of Mind
Powerslave
Somewhere in Time
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
No Prayer for the Dying
Fear of the Dark
The X Factor
Virtual XI
Brave New World
Dance of Death
A Matter of Life and Death
The Final Frontier

BQ: Favorite Iron Maiden song?
BQ2: Who do think is the best vocalist Maiden has had Paul, Bruce or Blaze.
BQ3: Favorite Judas Priest song?

Interesting question, especially as recently I really have been re-examining these albums, and the criteria by which I rank them. In the process, I found some much cherished rankings and beliefs of what I once held dear to be severely challenged.

Allow me to rank them, and then after I will attempt to explain what upset the apple cart, and how I could (Gasp! blasphemy!!!) end up ranking some "surefire classics" so low compared to others.

1) Powerslave
***absolutely an album without any warts. It is true there are some better individual tracks on certain other albums, but this album simply does not possess a single mediocre track. The "worst" track still score at least an 8 out of 10.

2) the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
***after 20 years this album STILL divides the faithful, but I think it is a brilliantly composed album, again, lacking any weak tracks, but one that takes longer to grow into and get as comfortable with than Powerslave. The Prog elements are there, but it does not have the dreary metronome 20 minute snoozers that many "Prog" bands seem to consider mandatory.

3) Iron Maiden
***If it had almost anyone other than Paul Di’anno on vocals, it would have ranked even higher, but why so many people revere his pipes I will never get. Even for a punk singer he had a severely limited range and monotonous delivery There is not a single track on this album that doesn’t immediately sound 10x better simply by having Bruce sing them. And yet, the songwriting is still so good, so original, that it is able to shine in spite of him.

4) The Final Frontier
***this is where my list veered off the tracks. Why? Simply put, for me, an album is made up of more that it’s individual tracks. Yes, there are individual songs on TNOTB and PoM and others that I like better than any single track on this album. BUT.. all of those also have several track s I consider to be absolute filler at best.. so how can I rate an album I find myself hitting skip on 3-4 times over an album I listen to straight through every single time? This has nothing to do with which are my favorite songs, but album, IN IT’S TOTALITY, and on that front, the Final Frontier delivers. I have listened to it over 50 times from start to finish since it’s release, and still can’t wait to listen again. And I have not hit skip yet. It takes all the great Prog maturity that they have been building since 200, but totally dispenses with the long, often dreary and dragging song structures and dynamics featured on "A Matter of Life and Death" and just delivers. It is their longest studio album ever, and yet it feels like it is half as long as it really is. THAT is a sign of a truly great album.

5) Dance of Death
***another area sure to raise eyebrows. But, despite the crappy cover art.. this album is simply fantastic. Anyone who is willing to stop living in the 80s and give Modern Maiden an unbiased look will be shocked by how much goodness is packed into this album. Be it the majesty captured in the epic track Paschendale, to the middle eastern influences in the Title track or the fabulous hooks in Rainmaker, this is the last Maiden album on my list that I truly enjoy every single track.

6) Piece of Mind
*** THE TROOOOOOOPERRRRR! to quote Bruce in Ulevi. Backed by such great tracks as :The Flight of Icarus" "To Tame a Land" and "Revelation" for a long time I stubbornly had it listed as my 3rd fave.. til I realized it was my stubborn 80s fanboy talking and not reality. Because when I compared it to how much I listened to other albums.. it was nowhere near as high as I thought. And really.. "Die with Your Boots on" is an OK song.. but hardly great, "Where Eagles Dare" was a musical piece that they polished and made much better use of as "The Duelists". The rest of the album, while not bad, really has not aged as well.

7) Number of the Beast
*** SIX…. Six Six! The Number of the Beast…… still one of the greatest concert tunes ever written. As an overall single for radio play, horribly overrated. Of course it also has my favorite track "Hallowed be Thy Name" on it along with "Invaders" with it’s iconic bass line, and "Run to the Hills" beyond that, many of the songs are really quite average. It is, IMO still ranked highly by most fans more out of a knee-jerk response to it being such an Iconic album ( much like Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon) than any real examination of the overall song quality.

Brave New World
***Bruce returns! All is now right and sane again in the world. As soon as you pop this one in, you know that things are again as they should be. The Wicker Man easily could have been on any p re "Fear of the Dark" album, and is an instant fan pleaser. It’s after that one starts to notice…. things aren’t quite as expected. Bruce on vocals.. check.. Smith is back on guitars….and even more interesting.. they kept Janik.. so now we got THREE guitars battling it out?!?!?! And yet.. the sound is totally different.. not in a bad way, but it was obvious.. Harris and company decided it was time to keep expanding their musical horizons.. and that the album title has as much to do with that as with any advances in technology and society. A solid re-union, but still only a glimpse of things to come.

9) Somewhere in Time
***Good album.. and Harris starts experimenting with Prog, which to their credit has also helped Maiden stay relevant. That said, there are a lot of songs on this album I really have to be in a mood to sit down for. Thill in all, "Wasted Years" "Heaven can Wait" "Tthe Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" and "Alexander the Great" largely make up for any of the weaker tracks, and number 9 on the Maiden scale still lands it far ahead of most albums, Metal or otherwise ever written.

10) Killers
*** Might have been more appropriately named "Fillers" IMO. After the pure WIN that was their debut album, this seemed a major letdown to me. "WrathChild", "Another Life", "Murders in the Rue Morgue", "Prodigal Son" and "Drifter" all live up to the standard, but the rest of the album is largely… lacking. I just find both instrumentals to be lacking in punch, especially after the musical escapades they demonstrated on "Phantom of the Opera". Not a bad album, and still one of the best album covers EVER, but just not one I listen to very often anymore.

11) A Matter of Life and Death
***When this album came out, I started to worry. Ever since "Brave New World" we had been seeing an increasing amount of Prog creep further and further into Maiden’s sound. And then this album came, chock full of 10 minutes opus’ and dirges. And they are not bad songs, and there are several standouts such as t"The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg" and "The Longest Day". I absolutely LOVED the jump back to the light and fast feel represented in "Different World". But after that.. it was dirge after dirge of interminable Prog. I think any of these songs are fine.. but having them all on the same album just turned it int o a drag-fest, whereas if they were mixed and sprinkled in with other Maiden tracks, they are fine. Just too much, too long, not enough dynamics to really get maximum enjoyment.

12) Fear of the Dark
***This album seems to get a lot of love.. and for the life of me I cannot figure out why. Out of it’s 12 tracks.. only 4 are particularly memorable…. and out of those, on the title track, "Fear of the Dark" is a true stand out by Maiden standards. The rest of this album was largely MEH, and so it was no shock to me that Bruce made good on his promise afterward and left.

13) No Prayer for the Dying
*** This album… is really just a stinker. It was also no coincidence that this is about the time Bruce started making rumblings of his dissatisfaction with the direction Maiden was heading in, and when Adrian Smith DID leave over it. "Tailgunner" tried in vain to revisit the galloping glory of the mid 80s, and "Holy Smoke" was a semi decent indictment of Televangelist.. about 5 years too late. Sadly, these were largely the high points of the album, with the banal "Bring your Daughter to the Slaughter" representing everything that was wrong with it.
14) X Factor
***I actually think, that songwriting wise, this album might be stronger than either No Prayer OR Fear of the Dark. BUT….. Blaze is such a poor fit for Maidens sound, especially after over a decade of Bruce, that it just is impossible for me to sit through the album. The few tracks I enjoy from it are ones that Bruce has covered since, such as Lord of the Flies and Man on the Edge. I can only imagine how this album might have sounded had he done the vocal duties. I think even Virtual XI may have proven a far better album had the vocals just not been so utterly un-listenable.

15) Virtual XI
***pretty universally agreed on that this was Maiden at their low point. Lets be honest.. had Bruce not returned to the fold in 1999 there probably would not be an Iron Maiden today, or they would be relegated to the county fair circuit living off their 80s stuff. And Harris is too proud a musician to go that route. There are still a few decent tracks, such as the Clansman, Futureal and the Angel and the Gambler. Sadly the first two only really shined after Bruce came back and put some life into the vox.

BQ- Hallowed be Thy Name. (followed closely by the Trooper)
BQ2- Bruce. Maiden would never have become what they are, despite the epic awesomeness at every instrument had they not added Bruce’s air raid siren of a wail.

Are they usually in a mystic land and she’s princess or something?

maybe five or six.

yeah, the dragon usually captures the princess or preistess of the kingdom.

Star Maidens is a British science-fiction television series made by Portman Productions for the ITV Network in 1976. Filmed at Bray Studios and on location in Windsor, Bracknell and Black Park, the series was part financed by a German company, Werbung im Rundfunk.

The series offered a battle of the sexes/role reversal scenario in which two male domestics escape from the female-ruled planet Medusa, land on Earth and are pursued by the Medusan security forces. When the Medusans fail to recapture the two men, they take two Earth hostages – a man and a woman – back with them to their home planet. The thirteen episodes of the series deal with the two groups trying to adapt to life on the different planets whilst brokering an exchange for the hostages.

Regarded as something of a camp novelty, Star Maidens tuned in to the sexual equality revolution of the time, and features some Femdom elements. The series starred Judy Geeson, Lisa Harrow, Christiane Krüger, Pierre Brice, Christian Quadflieg and Gareth Thomas.

The complete series of Star Maidens is available on DVD (Region 2, UK) from Delta.