I have to admit, Accident of Birth is the only Bruce album I've ever heard. I think it's a good album, but it wouldn't rank high compared to my list of Maiden albums. Maybe around 11th-13th.
Chemical Wedding.
Yeah, Chemical Wedding goes to the next level.
I'm going to add to the Chemical Wedding praise. Fantastic album that you (425, I mean ) should definitely check out, if you haven't heard it yet.
I will try to take this recommendation soon. I think I got AoB shortly before I lost interest in Maiden for several years, so I never made it back around to TCW.
Listened to
Killers yesterday, and I'm willing to eat a bit of crow on this album—at least, on it being clearly below the debut. I held that opinion for many years, but this time, I sort of heard
Killers fresh and several ways in which it is a significant upgrade over
Iron Maiden (note: if my Apple metadata can be trusted, which is not always the case, I had not listened to this album in full since 2016):
(1) The production is way better; having Birch on board was a big deal.
(2) Having Adrian matters a lot. I have nothing particularly against Stratton, but his playing is pretty unremarkable. Adrian takes things to the next level.
(3) I think there's a lot more awesome bass playing from Steve on this album. At least, it's a lot more noticeable.
(4) While I stand by calling Remember Tomorrow and Phantom of the Opera far and away the best songs of the Di'Anno era, I think the average song on
Killers is probably better than the average song on
Iron Maiden. It's certainly a more consistent album.
I now would have these two albums basically tied. If you asked me which one I would rather have if I could never listen to the other one (or any of its songs) again, then I would still pick the debut because of the top two songs. But if you asked me which one I enjoy more as an album listening experience, I think I would now say
Killers. And I can now hear what I couldn't for a long time, which is a sense of progression and improvement across the first four albums, with each taking a step forward over the previous. It's still down near the end of my list, but my view of it has certainly improved.
I'm listening to
The Number of the Beast right now, so I might post on that in a bit, or perhaps tomorrow. Next, I'm actually going to listen to
Beast Over Hammersmith for the first time ever. When I first got into the band, it was basically not available at all, but I saw that they now have it for download on iTunes, so I'm going to try that one. Will probably continue including the live stuff on my discography run.