The Devils Punchbowl Falls is a compulsory walk for anyone exploring Arthurs Pass. Yes there's a wee bit if uphill on Stairs, but its not too devilish to get up there. Our 4 year old managed it no worries at all.
Curiously the height gained on the track up is roughly the same as the height of the falls, but its only a human number.... The Falls are impressive by rain or shine, always worth the effort. Watch out for lots of muggles, the hide is on a bend near the falls, just after you've gone down some stairs. You can reach it from the track. Please rehide safely out of sight and under a few rocks.
Upon release in 1982, the song The Number of the Beast caused controversy in the United States where its religious subject matter caused outrage amongst religious groups. In spite of this, it remains one of the band's more popular songs, reaching No. 18 in the UK singles charts, and has been performed on almost all of their concert tours. According to the song's writer, bassist and band-founder Steve Harris, it was inspired by a nightmare he had after watching the film Damien: Omen II in addition to the poem Tam o' Shanter by Robert Burns.
The song opens with a spoken word passage, read by English actor Barry Clayton, which quotes Revelation 12:12 and Revelation 13:18. According to lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, the band originally asked Vincent Price to read the intro, but decided to hire Clayton after Price refused to do it for anything less than £25,000. The track is known for its very long, high-pitched and guttural wail at the end of the intro, which AllMusic describes as "the most blood-curdling Dickinson scream on record". In the Classic Albums documentary based on The Number of the Beast album, Dickinson states that it came about through frustration with producer Martin Birch, who forced him to sing the introduction repeatedly for hours on end.
In addition to the album's artwork and title, the song was a prominent target of religious groups in the United States who accused Iron Maiden of being a Satanic group. The controversy led to organised burnings of the group's albums as well as several protests during their 1982 tour, although this would only serve to give the band more publicity. Steve Harris has since commented that the accusations made against them were "mad. They completely got the wrong end of the stick. They obviously hadn't read the lyrics. They just wanted to believe all that rubbish about us being Satanists." On their following album, Piece of Mind, the band placed a backmasked message at the beginning of the song "Still Life," in which the band's drummer, Nicko McBrain, gives a drunken impression of Idi Amin. According to McBrain, the message, in which he says "Don't meddle wid t'ings yo don't understand", was directed at those who had labelled Iron Maiden as devil worshippers, commenting, "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?" On top of the accusations of Satanism, when "The Number of the Beast"'s music video was first shown on MTV, Eddie's appearance at the end was edited out after complaints from frightened viewers.