10 Hidden Details You Never Noticed In Iron Maiden Songs
8. If Standard Tuning Should Fail...
Given Iron Maiden's reputation for continually stretching the boundaries of both heavy metal and rock music as a whole over the course of their near-four-decade career, it may be a surprise to some fans that the vast majority of the band's back-catalogue has been delivered solely with E-standard guitar tunings.
In the '90s especially, for extreme bands to experiment with the sounds of their six-strings was almost a given, pioneered by acts like Machine Head and Slayer and, later, Gojira and Meshuggah. As lengthy and intricate as some of Maiden's compositions could get, one would assume that they would be a part of that down-tuned club as well.
However, it wasn't until 2015 and the lauded Book of Souls double album that the band finally fiddled with their tuning pegs, laying out opening track "If Eternity Should Fail" in drop D.
According to front-man Bruce Dickinson, this came much to the joy of lead guitarist Adrian Smith (and the apprehension of everyone else), who has a fondness for lower tunings and had experimented with them during his days with Dickinson's solo band.
As Bruce put it himself: "It only took us two centuries to discover drop D."