Designing Iron Maiden Cover Made Tim Bradstreet Pinch Himself

Posted on Jan 6th 2010 11:00AM by Amy Sciarretto Comments

If you're a fan of 'The Punisher,' the name Tim Bradstreet may be familiar to you. Or perhaps you've read about his redesign of Pantera's 'Vulgar Display of Power' cover for the oral history of that album on the current issue of Revolver. Bradstreet also designed the cover of Iron Maiden's 2007 release and 14th album overall, 'A Matter of Life and Death,' so the artist certainly has a well-earned bulk of metal cred!

"I was very fortunate to be a part of it," Bradstreet told Noisecreep. "It was a dream job to work with one of my all-time favorite bands. The whole experience was surreal. I just tried to do justice and honor to Derek Riggs, who was such a huge influence on me. Riggs is one of the big reasons that Maiden captured their fan base so completely. He gave them an identity, visually. In a sea of competition, it's hard to get people to notice. Derek got them to notice in a big way. I was just looking at his redesign of the artwork from the first album, and it's f---ing breathtaking. It's amazing."

Bradstreet is such a Maiden fan that he cops to still having the poster of Eddie in the cockpit of his Spitfire from 'Aces High' hanging in his studio. "Getting to work on 'AMOLAD' was me pinching myself every morning I woke up to go back to work on it. They supplied me with the tracks from the album to listen to and I was so completely stoked because the songs were incredible and in my mind, the best work Maiden had done since the 'Piece of Mind' and 'Powerslave' days. That made it even more daunting, but that's also why I got into it so completely. Those guys are like AC/DC: they don't change or evolve a whole lot, they just get better at what they do. I caught them on 'Live From Abbey Road' and they really, really blew me away. Tighter than I've ever seen 'em. They don't get old, they just show everyone else how it's done."

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