"Still Life" by Iron Maiden

Iron Maiden’s “Still Life” is my personal favorite of their songs. Nestled on the Piece of Mind album, the song tells the story of a man haunted by visions in a still pool, a place where faces stare back from the depths and voices call him to surrender. At the time I discovered it, I had just read a story in a Latin American literature class. Like the song, it was the story of a young man enticed to his death in a remote lake by a beautiful spirit. The song is based on a similar horror story, “The Inhabitant of the Lake” by Ramsey Campbell. I still can’t remember or find the story I read.

What might sound like the premise of a horror short story is, in fact, fertile ground for theological reflection.

In Scripture, water often symbolizes chaos and judgment, the “deep” over which the Spirit hovered before creation (Genesis 1:2), or the abyss into which demons beg not to be cast (Luke 8:31). In “Still Life,” the pool serves as a gateway to darkness. The man stares, again and again, into its glassy surface. He sees things he cannot unsee. In this, the song becomes a parable of temptation. The pull to “look” recalls Eve’s gaze at the forbidden fruit. A longing to know something that was never meant to be known.

When the narrator says, “They’ve got control of me,” we hear echoes of a deeper reality than mere madness. In Christian theology, the soul is not a fortress unto itself. It is vulnerable: to temptation, to deception, even to spiritual domination. The man is not merely afraid. He is overtaken. The song is the story of a slow surrender to evil.

Most haunting of all is the narrator’s isolation. “When I’m left alone, I’m with my mind… it’s no good at all.” Without truth, without grace, without any saving voice to interrupt the descent, the man spirals into oblivion. Our thoughts are not facts. They aren’t always, or even often, true. They are certainly not to be trusted. In the end, the narrator may drown. Or take someone else with him. This is not just horror for shock value; it’s a sobering depiction of what a soul cut off from mercy might look like.

Iron Maiden didn’t write “Still Life” as a theological treatise. But art doesn’t have to preach to provoke. In its ambiguous dread, the song raises timeless questions: What happens when we listen to the wrong voices? When we dwell too long on the things that call us from the deep? “Still Life” is a metal lament. And like the Psalms of lament, it doesn’t offer a resolution. But its very darkness pushes us to long for light.