Seventh Son of a Seventh Son is the last great Iron Maiden album, reconnecting with the band's prog rock roots and reversing the signs of decline that had been evident on their previous record.

By this point, Iron Maiden had earned the respect of metalheads the world over with their steadfast adherence to unadulterated metal and their grandiose aesthetic.

They'd made concessions neither to pop-metal nor to thrash, and their passionate fan base would never have tolerated a radical reinvention.

But what do you do when your epic ambition itself has become a formula? You go even bigger and make a concept album, of course, and that's what Iron Maiden does here, breaking out of the creative rut they'd fallen into on Somewhere in Time.

The concept is based on the European folklore which held that the seventh son of a seventh son would be born with special powers that could be used for good or evil.

As such, the lyrics are Iron Maiden at their most gothic, obsessed with supernatural mysticism of all stripes.

Musically, this is Iron Maiden at their proggiest, with abrupt, stop-on-a-dime transitions between riffs, tempos, time signatures, and song sections.

Yet nearly every song has a memorable chorus, with only "The Prophecy" falling short in that department.

No less than four of this album's eight songs reached the British Top Ten in some version, while the album became the band's first U.K. chart-topper since The Number of the Beast.

The title track is this album's extended epic, and it's moved out of the closing spot in yet another subtle statement about shaking things up.

If Seventh Son doesn't epitomize their sound or define an era the way the first three Dickinson albums did, it nonetheless ranks among their best work.