10 Hard Rock Bands Who Made 5 Great Albums In A Row

Even among this list of iconic, excellent hard-rock and metal bands, few have had the cultural impact of Iron Maiden. With crowds as far as the eye can see at Donington or their mascot’s face emblazoned on everyone from Lindsay Lohan to Lady Gaga and 50% of the crowd at any given hard-rock gig, the band are stone cold legends.

Picking a run of five in Iron Maiden’s career is agonising (are you sure we can’t pick seven?) but we’ve managed to do it, starting with 1982s The Number of the Beast, the first to feature the Bruce Dickinson on lead vocals. Dickinson allowed the band to be more expansive, epic and theatrical than before, and with endless possibility came a classic bunch of albums.

Next were Piece of Mind (1983), Powerslave (1984) and Somewhere in Time (1986) which was the band form their definitive lineup, write some enormous metal epics and become the legends they are today.

Then came their classic Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988), an album that should not only be a greatest hits in itself but a concept album that surprised all by not being a progressive epic. It’s slick and breezy as the band manage to conjure up an entire world and story in only 44 minutes.