1986 was going to be all about Slayer and Metallica. Metal fans knew it going into that year, and no doubt bands did as well. Heavy metal was advancing at an exponential rate, and every couple months — and at times even every few weeks — an album came out that pushed the still-nascent genre’s creative boundaries further outward. The already established veteran bands couldn’t help but feel the pressure, and their albums that year hinted at a bit of an identity crisis among them, as they pulled out all the stops to sound as cutting edge as possible. Iron Maiden and countrymen Judas Priest became enamored of a particular gimmick that year, the guitar synthesizer, and both created albums built around that instrument. Both albums sold very well, but it was Maiden’s Somewhere In Time that maintained a sense of integrity rather that feeling like a gimmick.

Indeed, the follow-up to 1984’s wildly successful Powerslave opens on an audacious note, the blend of guitar and synthesizer flying right in the face of the perceived prerequisite that all heavy metal be guitar-based, and nothing but. What the band does throughout the album, however, is use the synths as window dressing rather than the focal point. All but one song utilize guitar synths, but only for atmospheric purposes, a good complement to theBlade Runner theme running through the title track and Derek Riggs’s spectacularly intricate gatefold artwork. As a result there’s a graceful quality to the album’s best songs, in which power, melody, and ambiance coalesce into a cohesive whole. The title track, “Sea Of Madness,” “Heaven Can Wait,” and “Stranger In A Strange Land” are all prime examples of an established band benefitting from a little experimentation.

That said, Somewhere in Time is a curiously inconsistent album — “The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner” and “Déjà Vu” both stumble — and in retrospect is a perfect reflection of the internal strains within the band. After such a rigorous pace — three albums and three gigantic world tours in three years — the band was still burned out after taking much of 1985 off, and even worse, were at odds regarding how the next album should sound. Such was the creative divide between Bruce Dickinson and Steve Harris that Dickinson’s songwriting contributions were all rejected, but despite the merit of Harris’s “Heaven Can Wait” and “Caught Somewhere In Time,” this album will forever be remembered as the Maiden album Adrian Smith singlehandedly saved. Amidst the squabbling he brought in several fully formed songs greatly outshining everything else on the record. “Sea Of Madness” and “Stranger In A Strange Land” display his knack for melody and dynamics, contrasting heaviness and hooks brilliantly. It’s “Wasted Years,” though, that is far and away the highlight, a catchy little travelogue that’s become one of the band’s most enduring and treasured songs. Built around a clever arpeggiated lick, an affable chorus, and Smith’s sentimental lyrics, it’s a welcome dose of soul amidst all the bombast.

When I interviewed the band in 2010, I got to ask a question I’d always wanted to ask: what’s the one song they’ve never played but always wanted to play? Steve Harris and Dave Murray wasted no time in replying, “Alexander The Great”. A verbose storytelling epic in the vein of “Rime Of The Ancient Mariner” and “To Tame A Land,” it’s not a classic Maiden song by any stretch, but is nevertheless a clever one, striking a good balance between bluntness and subtlety, its mid-song instrumental break displaying a cinematic quality, and the latter half of the eight-minute song is one of Harris’s most underrated moments as a songwriter.

Flaws and all, audiences were starved for new Maiden material in the fall of 1986, and Somewhere In Time sold exceptionally well, cracking the top five in the UK. The road beckoned once again, and sporting a garish, cutting edge stage show inspired by Riggs’s artwork, the band launched another grueling run of 151 shows in eight months across North America, Europe, and Japan.