It’s time now to wrap up the Iron Maiden singles series. The final entry, and to date the last single to have a physical release, is Empire Of The Clouds from 2015’s The Book Of Souls. This was the album’s second single and it was released as part of Record Store Day in 2016.

There is only one version of this release, a 12-inch picture disc vinyl. There are a few CD promos out there but the mainline release was on this vinyl. It does feature some very nice cover art courtesy of Hervé Monjeaud. The art features the ever-present Eddie safely guiding an airship on fire to a comfortable landing spot. That or he’s knocking it out of the sky, who knows. I know last week I said that The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg was the undisputed winner in reunion era Maiden singles art, but obviously I’d forgotten about this one. This is really great and might be even better than the Breeg art.

The “thing” about Empire Of The Clouds is its length. At 18:01, it is Iron Maiden’s longest song by a mile, outpacing Rime Of The Ancient Mariner by nearly 5 minutes. And The Book Of Souls had another track that came within 12 seconds of Rime – The Red And The Black. It’s clear that in their later career, Iron Maiden have abandoned any concern about song length. The song length thing generates plenty of arguments but there’s little room for that today since there’s so much to talk about here.

Empire Of The Clouds was composed by singer Bruce Dickinson. He played the piano parts that run through the entire piece, then he and producer Kevin Shirley brought the band in and directed them on where and how to play their stuff. After this the piece was filled out with orchestra arrangements by Jeff Bova, a multi-instrumental session musician who has worked on a ton of stuff.

The song recounts a specific event, that being the disaster of the British R101 airship. The ship sailed on its maiden voyage and crashed in France in 1930, killing 48 of the 54 passengers and was a particularly infamous airship disaster. It ended Great Britain’s airship program and has a ton of history written about it.

The song begins with a piano intro and then spends the first several minutes in verses setting up the flight of the airship. After about seven minutes the song shifts focus and we get a bunch of guitars. That goes for another five minutes or so, then a new set of verses set to more intense music kick in and the demise of the R101 unfolds lyrically and musically.

This is an epic tale and song, and Bruce made sure the song had enough going on to not be 18 minutes of the same thing over and over again. I would say I’m hard pressed to think of an 18 minute long song that just does the same thing over and over again, but it’s not all that hard to come up with one….

Empire Of The Clouds got a mixed response from Maiden fans, though many more people embraced it that might have been guessed. The people down on it are generally the ones who find fault with song length anyway so it doesn’t really matter what this song specifically had going on. But it’s also not hard to find people who consider this one of their favorite Maiden songs.

I myself fall somewhere well in the middle of the argument – I have no issue with them doing a long song, do whatever you want, it’s your band. I do enjoy this track but it is one that requires me to focus to really listen to it. I can play The Book Of Souls and if I’m just hanging out listening to it, my attention might wander while this song is going, whereas there are other long songs I enjoy that hold my attention just fine. But when I do bring myself to pay attention I do think this is a wonderfully done song. I don’t think it’s long just for the sake of it, it’s clear that this was put together with thought and that the song wound up at its 18 minutes out of purpose.

This song has captured attention and generated opinion of all variety. It’s ridiculous on one hand but it also works. Whatever the case, Iron Maiden did something out of their norm here and wound up with a curiosity that did its job and grabbed attention. And hey, whatever you might think of this song, at least it’s not a 13 minute long dirge fest about the Loch Ness monster.

Maiden Voyage

The “B-side” isn’t a song, rather it’s a long interview piece with Bruce and Nicko McBrain discussing the background and recording of the song. It’s a very insightful talk, especially to hear how Bruce’s other career in aviation fuels his songwriting. It is long and perhaps not something a lot of people would find that interesting, but it’s a good supplement to the single and probably a far better choice than putting some random songs on that don’t fit the scale of the lead track at all.

And with this I mark the conclusion of the Iron Maiden singles series. I’ll have a bit of a postmortem on this tomorrow and some more about a potential resurrection of the series after I fill in my collection, as well as a look at the upcoming Maiden live album rundown I’ll begin soon. Thanks for tagging along on this journey through the Maiden singles, it was fun.

The Iron Maiden Singles Series

Live! + One

Running Free

Sanctuary

Women In Uniform

Maiden Japan

Purgatory

Twilight Zone/Wrathchild

Run To The Hills

The Number Of The Beast

Flight Of Icarus

The Trooper

2 Minutes To Midnight

Aces High

Run To The Hills (live)

Running Free (live)

Stranger In A Strange Land

Wasted Years

The Clairvoyant

Infinite Dreams

Bring Your Daughter … To The Slaughter

Holy Smoke

Be Quick Or Be Dead

From Here To Eternity

Virus

Out Of The Silent Planet

Rainmaker

Different World

The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg

Empire Of The Clouds (you are here)