Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast Voted Best British Album of Past 60 Years

NME.com reports that music retailer HMV conducted the poll which asked music fans to vote on the best British album from the past 60 years. Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast topped the poll with almost 10% of the votes.

Depeche Mode came second with Violator, and The Beatles (four albums in the Top 10) came third with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

After Dark Side, the gap to whatever is in 2d place is simply enormous.

Dark Side isn’t merely the Absolute Best ‘British’ Rock Album of all time, it is T.H.E. Absolute Best Rock Album of all time, period.

Concept, execution, ‘completeness’ — when they locked up those tracks, there wasn’t ANYTHING left on the table undone.

One Man’s Opinion

Two men's opinion.

This is the guy that Dos Equis needs in their commercials as the most interesting man alive. The dude is the front man for an iconic British Metal band, a good enough fencer to spar with the British Olympic team and a certified commercial pilot who actually moonlights for a real airline.

Without a doubt Iron Maiden is up there with the best of Heavy Metal has to offer. I remember when there first album came out in 1980, I found it in the import bend, and bought it base on cover art alone. When I got home I was blown away by it.

I was already a big Judas Priest fan from hearing the “Killing Machine” and “Stained Class” albums and then they put out “British Steel” right around the same time. IMHO JP’s “British Steel” album really opened up the door to metal in America. Then after Iron Maiden put out Killers I literally spent the whole summer holed up in my room with a guitar trying to learn ever song off those five albums.

What I am surprised by is that Black Sabbath's “Paranoid”, Deep Purple's “Machine Head”, and Judas Priest's “British Steel” albums didn't make the top 10.

I mean Black Sabbath being one of the biggest influences for Heavy Metal with the song “Iron Man” alone, then you have Deep Purple with the song “Smoke On The Water” that launched a million guitars, and then there is Judas Priest with “Living After Midnight” which opened up AOR play and made it cool for metal to be heard on radio.

I understand it was not just metal bands but all British Bands but I feel those three alone should have got a lot more recognition than they did. And don't even get me started on Led Zeppelin I and II not being up there. “Whole Lotta Love” was a mindblowing experience the first time I heard it and then there is “How Many More Times” which to this day is on my MP3 top 20.

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