Nice recap! Piece of Mind is one of my favorite albums of all time, and my Maiden favorite alongside Seventh Son.
The production is stellar, the songs iconic and timeless, Bruce owns the album like a god and Nicko is a very welcome addiction. A perfect album, and yes, I know there's Quest for Fire on it, but it's so amazing that it manages to plently make up for dinosaurs and men walking around together.
I already mentioned the lesser song of the album, but the other one that is overlooked, Sun and Steel, is, well, overlooked for me. Sure, it pales in comparison to the other songs of the album and the other ones of Maiden's discography, but the song itself is a nice rocker with a good chorus, and the ending ("Life is like a wheeeeeel.... and it's rolling stiiiiiiiillll") is badass.
And since I'm in the bottom half of the album (yeah I'm gonna praise all the songs here), let's remember To Tame a Land, the epic of the album that ends with a great instrumental section, which follows an insanely vocal progression by Bruce. To Tame a Land is also one of the four Maiden songs, in their history, that have claimed at a time the title of their longest song. Phantom of the Opera was the first longest song in Maiden's discography, for obvious reasons, Hallowed is seconds shorted, and To Tame a Land is longer than both. So when Piece of Mind was out, To Tame a Land was Maiden's longest song, a record it held for a year until Rime came along.
My personal opinion is also that if this song was never played live, fans to this day would still want to hear it. This happened with Alex the Great and so people want to hear that song, but if Alex was played and To Tame a Land wasn't, I'm sure we'd have petitions for that song.
Moving backwards from the bottom half, we have the brilliant and beautiful Still Life. I really love this song, pity it wasn't brought back for the Maiden England tours, it's just lovely and somehow unusual for Maiden, but it's damn great.
The first half of the album is filled of course with absolutely wonderful songs, all masterpieces. Maybe out of these songs, Die with your Boots on is the lesser one, but it's still a damn great rocker, and it was fun to hear it live. The two single are exagerately famous, Flight of Icarus whose video welcomed Nicko in the band and the immortal The Trooper.
I don't hear the studio version anymore, but when it's played live, The Trooper is an absolute rocker and a great injection of adrenaline. I will never, ever tire of hearing this song live. Put me in charge of Maiden's setlists, command me to drop all the overplayed classics but one, I will keep The Trooper in the set and I won't even have to think about it (Sorry Halloweed). It's just that great and iconic. Who ho ho ho ho ho who ho ho!
I'm left with the first two songs. Where Eagles Dare has one of the most awesome and memorable drum intros of all time, my favorite one along with, surprise surprise, Painkiller's. What a way to welcome Nicko into the band! also the song has a memorable riff and an insane performance from Bruce. I remember a story about the drum intro - how Nicko came up with a complicated intro that touched all the parts of his kit, Steve was impressed but didn't really like the intro, and asked "Hey, can you do something like this instead?", trying to play it on drums, and Nicko said "Ah, you mean this?", with "this" being the intro we all know and love.
So, 8 songs out of 9 mentioned, which song is left? Revelations. Long rant coming, beware!
I'm old enough to have lived in the cassette tapes era. Back in the mid '90s there was no widespread internet or YouTube or Spotify, so cassette tapes, sometimes copied second or third hand, were the way to discover music.
Back in 1995 I was the passionate experiment of a classmate that turned me first to foreign music and hard rock with Bon Jovi and Guns n' Roses, and then to metal music with Iron Maiden. He had an habit of making compilations, with the proper pacing and so with a good opener, the good balance etc, so the very first bands I discovered (Bon Jovi, Guns n' Roses, Maiden, Metallica), were all thanks to these compilations - it took me some years to finally listen to full albums from start to finish, it was all a "greatest hits" for me.
I still remember my classmate making eventually 4 mix tapes of Iron Maiden for me, and another one of his habits was to save the "best" song for last, he even marked it with a little star on the handwritten tracklist. On the first cassette tape, the "star" song was Revelations... and boy, he was right!
The song itself, the lyrics, Bruce's absolutely wonderful performance ("She came to me with a serpent's kiss, as the eyes of the sun rose on her lips, moonlight catches silver tears I cry")... that was it. That was when I fell in love with Bruce's voice, with Iron Maiden, and with heavy metal in general.
Bon Jovi's and Guns n' Roses' hard rock already paved the way for heavy music for me, and I'm sure I would have became a metalhead one way or the other, but that's the way it happened: falling in love with Revelations (not that I disliked the other songs of the compilation but that was my favorite) started the avalanche effect that made me a lifelong Iron Maiden and then heavy metal fan.
Revelations, while still being a very great song in itself, holds the record of being symbolically the most important song in my musical formation, and symbolically also my Maiden favorite song as well. And the album that has this song is wonderful and one of the best things ever happened to mankind!