It is of course no secret that I'm a huge fan of Iron Maiden, but apart from their excellent music and the fact that they bore the standard for metal throughout the eighties and further, they have had some pretty incredible album covers. This is natually down to the artistry of Derek Riggs, who was with them for their first eight albums and created some iconic artwork, including of course the sleeve for “The number of the Beast”, “Killers” and “Powerslave”, but what's perhaps interesting about the cover we're going to feature here is that it was
not the work of Mr. Riggs. In fact, it was the first (but not the last) Iron Maiden album to feature a design by Melvyn Grant, whom the guys had turned to in their efforts to “upgrade Eddie for the 90s ... take him from the sort of comic-book horror creature and turn him into something a bit more straightforward so that he became even more threatening .” (from Wikipedia)
And by golly it worked! I mean, Eddie is scary on the covers of all the previous albums, not least of which is “Killers”, where he stands with a bloody axe in his hand and a maniacal grin on his skeletal face, but even so, he
does look like a cartoon, a caricature. It's hard to be scared of him (though I was, when I was younger and before I was introduced to Maiden's music), but the creature Grant came up with for the sleeve of this album looks all the more menacing because in many ways he looks more real. And if it's real, or could be real, it's always more terrifying.
No. 7: “Fear of the dark” by Iron Maiden
Unlike many other album covers I've looked at in this section, there is, to be fair, not a whole lot going on here, but that's okay because your eye is drawn right away to Eddie, and it's hard to look away, as there really isn't anything else to see. So you end up staring at him, even if it does make you shiver a little. Well, let's be honest: nobody is
really afraid of an album cover, are they? It's just a picture on cardboard. But as a depiction of something from our darkest nightmares, it certainly works.
Taking a closer look, it's not just Eddie perched in a tree, waiting for some unsuspecting passerby to, well, pass by. No, he's actually
part of the tree. He's growing out of it. Or is he? You could also postulate that he's being taken
into the tree, that it's sucking him into itself and making him part of it. Or even that he
is the tree, an extension of it. Whichever way you look at it though, it's a scary picture. How many times have you passed through, or contemplated passing through a dark wood, forest, park, and despite thinking yourself hard there's always been a tiny little quivering voice inside your head that whispers that THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE TREES! Okay, that's not a whisper, but you know what I mean.
We are, genetically, predisposed to feel uneasy in the dark. Some people fear it, some have a phobia about it. It's natural: back in our caveman days, night was when the wild animals prowled with impunity, or our warlike neighbours might use the cover of darkness to attack us. In the dark, we can't see as well as we can in the light, so we're at a disadvantage; things that we could clearly make out in the light don't seem the same. A tree could be an attacker, a rock could be a small animal, the moonlight glinting on grass could be blood. Sounds, too, take on a much more sinister tone at night, or in the dark. Creaks, groans, the wind sighing, animals calling across the fields, voices ... all seem somehow heightened and given new meaning, and our imagination begins to work overtime. Unable to see what things are, our brain can't unequiviocally tell us that they're not what we think or fear them to be, and so we begin to see things that aren't there.
The figure of Eddie perched in, growing out of or whatever, lying in wait in the tree while behind him the full moon casts its pale light upon his ghastly form, is something that speaks to an image buried deep in all our subconciousnesses: the thing hiding under the bed, or in the bushes, or just beyond the range of our vision. The cry in the night, the creaking step, the sound that could be breathing. The horrible, unimaginable and inexplicable terrors that wait in the shadows, outside the strong, high walls of reason and rationality, waiting for a chance, a crack, a fissure in the brick through which they can pour screaming through. All of these things conjure up vistas of fear and panic, and when we go into an area that is dark and seems to harbour danger, our imagination pencils in that danger for us, even if we bravely try to ignore the image.
But Eddie is here, real and ready to drop down and rend whoever walks by. He's some sort of horrible corruption of a dryad, the tree-spirits and nymphs of Greek legend who lived in the forests and made their home in the trees. They were benevolent; Eddie is not. His long, nasty claws are like extensions of the sharper branches of the tree he's hiding in or part of, his wild, unruly hair is like its leaves, his razor teeth are ready to rip and tear, and his eyes are afire with the very light of Hell itself.
Looking at the album cover, there's a very real reason to be afraid of the dark!