Iron Maiden- Iron Maiden (1980)

No album should be considered in a vacuum; where and when a collection of songs was made is always absolutely central to understanding it. With this album we know the score- debut album, NWOBHM, London pub scene, Paul Di'Annio still the singer, Steve Harris hated punk, etc. And yet while, like any album, this one has a context of time and place, it really is timeless, as the real classics often are. It exists far beyond the NWOBHM scene for which Maiden were always too big.

In 1980, unless you were Lemmy, punk and metal were two different words. This was very much Steve Harris' band- Paul Di'Annio is an excellent singer but not the virtuoso that Bruce Dickinson would be; he doesn't try to overshadow the guitars- and very much on the side of metal and certainly not punk. Any yet, despite the superficially metal guitars, there's very little in the structure of the songs that would alienate a punk. You wouldn't need to do much more than change the production a bit, and perhaps a few solos, to reveal what could plausibly be a punk album. Even the vocals could remain unchanged.

Many songs from this album- "Running Free", "Prowler", "Iron Maiden"- would go on to be immortal. This is not a NWOBHM album, or even really a rock album. It's a true rock classic.