A concept album inspired by the novel Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card, the record incorporates elements of progressive rock,[4] seen in the length and complex structure of the title track.

It was also the first Iron Maiden album to feature keyboards, after the band had introduced non-keyboard synth effects on their previous LP, Somewhere in Time (1986).

The band played over 100 shows, including the Monsters of Rock festival at Donington Park, and recorded the Maiden England video at Birmingham's NEC.

"[7] In addition to Dickinson's return to writing, the album was also notable for its number of co-written pieces, in contrast to its predecessor, with five of the eight tracks being collaborative efforts.

According to Dickinson, the band decided not to hire a keyboard player, with the parts being "mainly one-finger stuff from Adrian [Smith, guitarist], Steve, the engineer or whoever had a finger free at the time".

[10] Harris was fond of the development, in spite of the fact that the record did not sell as well as its predecessor in the United States;[11] "I thought it was the best album we did since Piece of Mind.

[15] According to Smith, the song "Can I Play with Madness" "actually started life as a ballad I had been working on called 'On the Wings of Eagles'.

"[17] Of the album's remaining songs, Metal Hammer states that "Moonchild" is loosely based on the Aleister Crowley novel of the same name, while "Infinite Dreams" is about a character who "implores a spiritualist to unlock the meaning behind his tortured dreams",[18] although Sputnikmusic state that the song also explores "themes of reality, life after death, and the meaning of life".

[19] The final track, "Only the Good Die Young", closes the storyline[19] and was later featured in an episode of the 1980s' TV series Miami Vice.

[20] The record opens and closes with an identical brief acoustic piece accompanied by two verses of lyrics,[9] written by Dickinson,[14] which, according to Sputnikmusic, "foreshadows doom and failure for the protagonist" and "wraps up the album".

To promote the album, the band hosted an evening of television, radio and press interviews at Castle Schnellenberg in Attendorn, Germany prior to the record's release,[21] before holding a small number of "secret" club shows, under the name "Charlotte and the Harlots", at Empire, Cologne and L'Amour, New York.

[24] To recreate the album's keyboards onstage, the group recruited Michael Kenney, Steve Harris' bass technician, to play the keys throughout the tour, during which he would perform the song "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" on a forklift truck under the alias of "The Count" (for which he would wear a black cape and mask).

[16][25][26] Iron Maiden was apparently included in the Guinness Book Of World Records Museum in Las Vegas, NV.

"[27] According to Rod Smallwood, the band's manager, the brief given to Derek Riggs (the group's then regular artist) was, unlike with previous albums, to create "simply something surreal and bloody weird".

"[29] Dickinson states that the idea to set the painting in a polar landscape may have originated from when he showed Riggs a Gustave Doré piece, depicting traitors frozen in a lake of ice in the ninth circle of Dante's Inferno.

[29] On top of this, Eddie's head is on fire, which Riggs states is "a symbol for inspiration", an idea which he "stole" from Arthur Brown.

[31] Sputnikmusic scored the album 4 out of 5, and, while they state that "the band has better releases, such as Powerslave and Somewhere in Time", they argue that it is "lyrically ... one of Maiden's finest efforts".

were extremely positive upon the album's release, awarding full marks and stating that "[with Seventh Son of a Seventh Son] Iron Maiden have given rock music back its direction and its pride" and that the record "will eventually be hailed alongside such past milestones as Tommy, Tubular Bells and [The] Dark Side of the Moon.

"[32] In 2024, Jeff Giles wrote that Seventh Son found Iron Maiden sounding like "a more aggressive version of Yes or Kansas.