With an atmosphere reminiscent of Lawrence Of Arabia, the 1962 film with Peter O'Toole, this song is probably one of the best on the whole album. Although the lyrics are pretty straightforward and just deal with the people of the desert, it is an epic quite similar to 'To Tame A Land'. The music brings up images of the desert and of its immense wastelands of sand, and the arrangements are fantastic, mostly during the quiet instrumental part where the keyboards sound like a whole orchestra playing (it never fails to send some shivers down my spine). This is a real masterpiece!

Beckett The instrumental part of 'The Nomad' has been borrowed from Beckett's 'Life's Shadow', a song featured on their one and only self-titled 1974 album. Obviously, it has been re-arranged to fit Iron Maiden's style and sound, but the similarity is absolutely unmistakable. Incidentally, 'Life's Shadow' also contains lyrics that Steve Harris used for 'Hallowed Be Thy Name'. Some may consider this plagiarism, but I doubt that Maiden would have used this material without prior consent of the original artists. Besides, there's nothing wrong with a little inspiration from another band when you write such a great piece of music. In any case, Beckett may have released only one album, but they sure influenced Steve a lot!