With the success of 1982’s Number of the Beast, one would think Iron Maiden would be hard pressed to follow it with an equal or better record, but they did just that with Piece of Mind.

Despite bringing in a new drummer in yet another personnel change, 1983’s Piece of Mindturned out to be an amazing album and it defined Maiden’s modern, mid-late 1980s sound.

The album was quickly recorded at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas from January to March, 1983, and is the first to feature drummer Nicko McBrain after former skin-basher Clive Burr was ousted from Maiden in December, 1982.

Coming off the phenomenal Beast album and tour, the band was getting comfortable with each other as singer Bruce Dickinson had time to get fully adjusted to the workings of Iron Maiden. Dickinson had more influence on the songwriting, composing “Revelations”, while co-writing on “Flight of Icarus”, “Die with your Boots On”, and “Sun and Steel”.

“I think on this album, because Bruce has been in a band awhile and was also very involved with the writing, he’s more relaxed,” said bassist Steve Harris in a 1983 interview with Kevin Thompson for Artist Magazine. “So the vocal performance is tremendous. He’s so quick in the studio because his ear for pitch is so good – he just gets up there and bang, it retains a great live feel.”

Most of the songs were written at Hotel le Chalet in New Jersey during the hotel’s off-season, then recorded down in Nassau.

Certainly, Piece of Mind sets the mark for the “new Maiden” in terms of personnel and how the band sounds on record. It’s the first record of the great bunch that includes Powerslave, Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son of Seventh Son to have that clean, crisp, modern metal sound.

“I think it’s now becoming what Iron Maiden is all about, and we expect it’s going to develop from there,” said Harris at the time.