Line #31 NightmareFuel/IronMaiden


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/empireoftheclouds_9.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:"''Reaper standing beside her/with his scythe, cuts to the bone...''"]]
3
4	----
5	* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsOCHIMr7Fk Satellite 15 part of "Satellite 15... The Final Frontier"]] Essentially, it starts off with an extremely bizarre bass riff that becomes the underlying riff for two whole minutes, followed by a tribal drum riff being repeated over and over. Then doom metallish guitar chords kick in, where suddenly a second three beat drum riff kicks in and loops over and over for a minute while a bizarre HellIsThatNoise guitar riff plays. The drums and guitars stop eventually, only for a few guitar chords and Bruce singing about being lost in space and desperate for someone to hear his call ensue. Then suddenly a double bass drum riff and military drum line kick in, only for it to end with four {{Scare Chord}}s (for some this is where the intro really gets kickass). Then, of course, the rather upbeat and positive title track happens. Apparently, it's a demo that Adrian Smith handed to Steve Harris and it appears on the album as is. One must wonder what the hell that H was smoking when he made it.
6	* The band topped themselves with the intro for the 2011 Final Frontier tour. As Satellite 15 plays, the intro video consists of shots from the The Final Frontier video, random shots of an EQ, exploding nebulas, grotesque X ray imagery, a CG Bruce who looks slightly deformed singing, Eddie roaring in the audience's faces, melting film and explosions. Meanwhile, the band stays in the dark with sullen facial expressions remaining unnaturally still, and could only be seen by camera flashes and quick glimpses of light as the lights shine outward. Then Bruce runs to the mic stand and thus the awesomeness starts. Seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASc-M4oNHcc here]].
7	** On the topic of intros to tours, Maiden England Tour has [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm-yLhH8yOQ quite the pleasant imagery]]. After some awesome shots of glaciers falling, deformed CG Bruce returns yet again and sings the "seven deadly sins" part. When the synthesizer loop plays, the imagery begins getting less based on glaciers and more based on... towns being destroyed, abandoned houses, fruit rotting, bugs, and a particularly disturbing shot of a bunch if presumably dead hands falling onto a pane of glass.
8	* "Dream of Mirrors" has some very unsettling lyrics, about a man who has nightmares of being trapped in a maze of mirrors.
9	** By the same token, some of the lyrics of "Infinite Dreams":
10	-->Suffocation waking in a sweat
11	-->Scared to fall asleep again
12	-->In case the dream begins again
13	-->Someone chasing I cannot move
14	-->Standing rigid a nightmare's statue
15	-->What a dream when will it end
16	-->And will it transcend?
17	* "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"'s slow and creepy middle part is the last thing you want to listen to at midnight with the lights off. The fact that a brief snippet of that part is played over a photo of the band staring at the camera (with creepy stares too) on a brief segment of the documentary on Disc 2 of ''Live After Death'' doesn't help either. (2:33 in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0xHRaR0_WM this video]]).
18	* "The Talisman" narrates a transatlantic voyage of a convoy of ~10 ships as they sail to America to settle, but their trek coincides with a hurricane that sinks 4 of their ships, and most of the survivors start dying of starvation and scurvy until they reach their destination. The narrator's happiness is short-lived, however, as he succumbs to either a local disease, the sheer fatigue and stress from the voyage, or to the scurvy itself. The concept of the talisman itself may refer to either a compass (which is guiding them westward), or to a Christian cross (which is driving them westward).
19	** The music means to evoke the storm itself as it makes the ocean waters gnaw their ships down. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9Tdw5nG4dQ Picture]] the insanity of ''Film/ThePerfectStorm'', but in '''sail ships'''.
20	* "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg". The fact that it's from an album full of lyrics rife with Nightmare Fuel is bad enough ("The Legacy" in particular), however the lyrics sound like a sad clown's lament and the horrifying image that the line "a thousand souls weighing down on me" creates. Sweet dreams.
21	* "Still Life", about a man who sees spirits or being in a lake and becomes obsessed with them. After many nightmares and visions of the images in the water, he takes his girlfriend with him and they drown themselves in the lake to be with the ghosts.
22	** Even worse, there is ''no'' qualification that his partner is okay with this, which implies that he's a murderer on top of everything else.
23	* "When I was living this lie, fear was my game/People would worship and fall, drop to their knees!/So bring me the blood and red wine, for the one to deceive me/For he is a man and a God, and he will die too!" To be fair, the whole song ("Powerslave", from the album of the same name) is pretty creepy.
24	* The guitar riff to "Sea of Madness". Seriously, it is one of the most unnerving and unsettling riffs ever written.
25	* The cover art for ''The X Factor''. Eeewwwww.
26	** The censored cover makes for some good NothingIsScarier fare. The same event is shown, just from far away.
27	* "Lightning Strikes Twice", the lyrics could be a metaphor for childhood abuse. Either way, the lyrics are largely unsettling. "It takes me back to my childhood again..."
28	* The video for "The Final Frontier". An astronaut heads to a planet to get a pyramid box and key, only to be creeped on by Eddie, who hides in the walls. When he arrives at the objects, he suddenly notices a noise behind him, only to turn around and find Franchise/{{Predator}}-like Eddie, whose movements are just plain WRONG. While it may seems as if he escapes, he isn't totally lucky: when he attempts to open the box, Eddie yanks him by the neck and throws him to his death in outer space. What a charming, fluffy, happy ending.
29	* "Moonchild" is both this and CMOA:
30	-->I'll count the heads of those unborn
31	-->The accursed ones, I'll find them all
32	-->And if you die by your own hand
33	-->As a suicide, you shall be damned
34	-->And if you try to save your soul
35	-->I will torment you, you shall not grow old
36	-->For every second and waking breath
37	-->You'll be so alone, your soul will bleed to death
38	* "Fear is the Key". That song sounds like a madman's perception of HumansAreBastards.
39	* "Face in the Sand". The music is all calm at first, but soon gets crushingly heavy as the song is about 9/11.
40	* The lyrics of "Fear of the Dark":
41	--> Have you ever been alone at night
42	--> thought you heard footsteps behind
43	--> and turned around and no-one's there?
44	* Eddie has been known to look like the fantasy equivalent of CrazyIsCool. However, the original 1980 album cover of ''[[Music/IronMaidenAlbum Iron Maiden]]'' shows a more detailed drawing of Eddie - this is because Derek Riggs based the texture of Eddie's skin on a disturbing image he saw of a decapitated American head hanging from a Vietnamese tank. [[http://www.rastko.rs/kosovo/istorija/ccsavich-propaganda/009.jpg Here it is.]]
45	* [[http://youtu.be/nDBpdkKTndk Their cover of]] "Kill Me Ce Soir" by legendary Dutch band Golden Earring. The original is bad enough with its ultra-trippy atmosphere and reversed guitar backing and lyrics about a fan who misinterprets a song by his favourite artist and takes it too far, but Maiden's version tops it. It starts off typical Maiden-sounding and Bruce sounds normal, but over the course of the song he gets raspier and more utterly deranged as if ''he'' is the fan in question.
46	* The hooded figure from the "Flight of Icarus" video.
47	* "When the Wild Wind Blows", based off the [[ComicBook/WhenTheWindBlows equally depressing graphic novel/film of the same name]] is about an elderly couple who hear the news that a nuclear war is about to destroy their lives. So they load their shelter up and get ready for the attack. However, the original ending is replaced by the couple swallowing cyanide and killing themselves when the attack happens. At the very end, it's revealed [[ShootTheShaggyDog there was no fallout, it was just an earthquake]]. Given that the song came out just barely a year after the 2012 panic and the [=H1N1=] hysteria, it's largely unsettling.
48	** When the band performed the song live, instead of the usual Eddie image, the [[http://i.ytimg.com/vi/gqj0wR77BjM/hqdefault.jpg backdrop]] showed a town devastated from a natural disaster.
49	* The [[http://www.ironmaiden.com/fefiles/images/TBOS-Packshot_995.jpg cover]] of ''The Book of Souls''. Usually there's a lot happening on the album covers, but here... its just Eddie staring at you. [[NothingIsScarier Nothing else.]] No crazy faces, no badass battles. Just him ''staring into your soul.'' It's the first time that Eddie has been truly scary in ages.
50	* Usually when they perform "Iron Maiden", they have Eddie show up from behind the stage, and the result it usally a mix of NightmareFuel and CrazyIsCool. However, the 1995 X Factor Tour had Eddie [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JZ_SQ4Bw5E being electrocuted to death]] with realistic smoke.
51	* "Good day. My name is Necropolis. I am formed of the dead. I am the harvester of the soul meat. And I suck the lives from around my bed. My only two sons, I gave them breath, and I filled their living corpses with my bile. What humanity I knew, I have long forgotten. For me, eternity is NOTHING, but a short while..."
52	* "Empire of the Clouds" is a retelling of the R101 airship disaster, and for the first 7 or so minutes, things aren't bad. Then, suddenly, the band Morse codes "SOS" with their instruments. Things get typical Maiden until 11 minutes in, when Bruce begins frantically singing as if he's caught in the whole struggle to get the doomed airship under control as the crew gets closer and closer to Northern France, along with some very nightmarish imagery. Then at 14 minutes in, the fatal crash and fiery explosion of the R101 on Beauvais Ridge is resembled by swelling strings, pianos, doomy chords and haunting choirs. It's extremely unsettling and really shows how horrific the crash was.
53	** As shown above, the cover art for the Record Store Day exclusive shows Eddie wrecking the airship mid-air, with the reaper right next to him (in undoubtedly the scariest appearance of the reaper in the artwork yet). And a look at the [[http://s693.photobucket.com/user/mindtakis/media/DSC00745_zpsrsstjefx.jpg.html full artwork]], there's skulls and screaming faces hidden in the clouds, and the action is happening right above the Beauvais cathedral.
54	* The cover to the single version of "Running Free". This is the first time Eddie was ever seen but we don't see his face. All we see is a huge, slender figure looming over a man running away in fear. Looking closely at Eddie, you can see his left arm is missing. Where is it? It's in the foreground waiting to grab the man running from Eddie (Though it's actually drawn as a right arm if the hand is anything to go by...whoops). [[http://www.metal-archives.com/images/2/3/7/9/2379.jpg See for yourself]].
55	* The lyrics from the title track of ''Music/{{Killers}}'' are full of ParanoiaFuel.
56	--> ''You walk through the subway, his eyes burn a hole in your back\
57	A footstep behind you, he lunges prepared for attack''

Context NightmareFuel / IronMaiden