Iron Maiden released their fourth studio album “Peace of Mind” on May 16, 1983. The album followed the 1982 classic “The Number of the Beast” and featured the singles “Flight of Icarus” and “The Trooper.”According to drummer Nicko McBrain, that song’s dark themes were taken up largely to poke fun at their religious critics in the U.S.:"We were sick and tired of being labeled as Devil worshipers and all this bollocks by these f*cking 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?" he explains in “Iron Maiden: Run to the Hills, the Authorised Biography.”