| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Where Eagles Dare" | Steve Harris | 6:08 |
| 2. | "Revelations" | Bruce Dickinson | 6:51 |
| 3. | "Flight of Icarus" |
| 3:49 |
| 4. | "Die with Your Boots On" |
| 5:22 |
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5. | "The Trooper" | Harris | 4:10 |
| 6. | "Still Life" |
| 4:37 |
| 7. | "Quest for Fire" | Harris | 3:40 |
| 8. | "Sun and Steel" |
| 3:25 |
| 9. | "To Tame a Land" | Harris | 7:26 |
| Total length: | 45:28 | ||
Included in the liner notes is a slightly altered version of a passage from the Book of Revelation, which reads,
The actual text (from Chapter 21, Verse 4) is nearly identical, except that it reads, "neither shall there be any more pain" rather than "brain", which was added as a pun on the album's title
Lyrically, the album largely reflects the group's literary interests, such as
"To Tame a Land", inspired by Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel Dune;
"Sun and Steel", based on the life of samurai Miyamoto Musashi and its title taken from Yukio Mishima's 1968 essay;
"Still Life", influenced by Ramsey Campbell's 1964 short story "The Inhabitant of the Lake",
"The Trooper", inspired by Alfred, Lord Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854).
"Where Eagles Dare", based on the Brian G. Hutton 1968 film of the same title, scripted by Alistair MacLean,
"Quest for Fire", based on the 1981 film by Jean-Jacques Annaud.
"Revelations", written by Dickinson, includes lines from G. K. Chesterton's hymn O God of Earth and Altar, while the remainder of the song is influenced by Aleister Crowley.
At the beginning of the sixth track, "Still Life", the band included a hidden message which could only be understood by playing the song backwards. This was a joke and an intended swing back at the critics who had accused Iron Maiden of being Satanic. The backwards-message consists of drummer Nicko McBrain mimicking actor John Bird's impression of Idi Amin, uttering the following phrase "What ho said the t'ing with the three 'bonce', don't meddle with things you don't understand...", followed by a belch. The phrase itself is taken from the satirical album The Collected Broadcasts of Idi Amin (1975) by Bird and Alan Coren. "What ho" and "What ho said the t'ing" are phrases that also crop up regularly on McBrain's "Listen With Nicko!" tracks from The First Ten Years collection.
According to McBrain, "We were sick and tired of being labelled as Devil worshippers and all this bollocks by these fucking morons in the States, so we thought, 'Right, you want to take the piss? We'll show you how to take the bleeding piss, my son!' And one of the boys taped me in the middle of this Idi Amin routine I used to do when I'd had a few drinks. I remember it distinctly ended with the words, 'Don't meddle wid t'ings yo don't understand.' We thought, if people were going to be stupid about this sort of thing, we might as well give them something to be really stupid about, you know?
