Getting towards the end of the live album series here, though rest assured that the series will grow in the future, we won’t spend long without a new Maiden live album taking up more of my precious vinyl storage space.

The album title here makes things very easy to decode – this is the live album from the tour cycle for The Book Of Souls. The tour ran 2016 and ’17 and the shows here are mostly from 2016, with only two performances being on the 2017 run, for reasons that will be obvious in a minute. I did personally see this tour twice, once each year.

The songs are gathered from a variety of tour stops and represent a good chunk of the inhabited world. Sadly neither show I attended was picked, as nothing from the United States was chosen. The show must go on despite my wounded American exceptionalism. A few cuts come from major metal festivals, one from the almighty Wacken festival in Germany and two from the 2016 Download fest in England. The two Download songs mark the only “repeat” venue across the 15 tracks.

The band line-up is the same as it’s been all through the reunion era – Steve Harris in charge and on bass, Bruce Dickinson singing, the guitar threesome of Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers, and Nicko McBrain doing the drumming.

There was one huge question going into this tour – how was Bruce Dickinson going to sound? This wasn’t just a question of Bruce getting older – he had been treated for throat cancer in 2015, before the release of The Book Of Souls. It was something I was wondering about in early 2016 before the show then, fair to say that any concerns about the illness impacting his performance were quashed early on.

There was also a legal issue that would affect the 2017 setlist. Maiden were sued over songwriting to their magnum opus Hallowed Be Thy Name. The song had borrowed lyrics from the 1973 song Life’s Shadow by Beckett, a band that Maiden manager Ron Smallwood had been the agent for. Camp Maiden had a longstanding arrangement in place with a Beckett member who was billed as the song’s sole writer, but in the 2010’s a new lawsuit emerged from another Beckett band member who claimed he was cut out of a rightful share. This kept Hallowed… out of the setlist in 2017, the suit was settled out of court in early 2018.

This is all relevant here as the live album mirrors the 2017 setlist, despite having been mostly recorded from 2016 shows. There was one other change beyond removing Hallowed Be Thy Name – the BoS song Tears Of A Clown, a tribute to the tragic death of beloved actor Robin Williams, was also cut from 2017 sets. The BoS song The Great Unknown was added in, as was the early classic cut Wrathchild.

A quick note on video – while most live packages up to this point have had a physical video release, this one only got a digital video issue. Everything is freely available to watch on YouTube, so this did mark the likely end of the “old school” video releases from Maiden. Kind of sad in a way but that’s how changes roll.

Let’s do the usual – go ove the tracklist, then get into the music itself. This won’t take too long as it’s the typical reunion era album tour format.

If Eternity Should Fail

Speed Of Light

Wrathchild

Children Of The Damned

Death Or Glory

The Red And The Black

The Trooper

Powerslave

The Great Unknown

The Book Of Souls

Fear Of The Dark

Iron Maiden

The Number Of The Beast

Blood Brothers

Aces High

Going right into the reason for this album being – the songs from The Book Of Souls. There are several pretty obvious inclusions here – opener If Eternity Should Fail, the track Steve Harris knicked off of Bruce’s solo album, also opens the show and works great in that spot. The album’s single Speed Of Light is a quick and shorter number that also easily works live. And the title track Book Of Souls is another just amazing Janick Gers title track masterpiece.

We do also get Death Or Glory, another Maiden airplane dogfight song that is fine but not everyone’s cup of tea. The Great Unknown is another song that I’d also call fine but not necessarily remarkable. I would have preferred having Tears Of A Clown on the live album over either of those but Steve Harris didn’t ask me my opinion.

There is one other BoS song here – the monster epic The Red And The Black. This is the third-longest song Maiden have recorded, beaten out only by Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, and that only by 20 or so seconds, and then Empire Of The Clouds by several minutes. Opinion on The Red And The Black is divided, all I can do is offer mine – I absolutely love the song and I’m glad I got to hear it live twice and also have it on this release. It’s one of those songs that I play and take in every second and feel like only five minutes have passed when it’s over, I just don’t process that it’s as long as it is. So nothing but praise for me there.

There aren’t any real “hidden gem” songs here. We could call Children Of The Damned one – it was played a lot in its day but is kind of a treat in modern setlists, I guess. Powerslave is also one I don’t often expect to pop up, it does eat a few more minutes of stage time than others but I’ll never complain about hearing it.

There is an interesting bit in the encore – we can see by this point that the Brave New World opus Blood Brothers has been elevated to encore status. The song has been one of the most well-received of the reunion era and it’s a rightful Maiden anthem at this point, so it does fit well in this spot.

Beyond that, everything here is obvious picks. They are the same songs on most every other Maiden live release and yes, you do run a lot of the same ground when you release more live albums than other bands release total studio albums. Not a complaint from me, merely an observation.

The sound here is really good – this sounds live and still comes across clear and listenable. It’s a very solid recording that captures things very well and is “put together” out of its several different performances to fashion a very cohesive listening experience. No complaints at all in that department.

Overall this is a pretty remarkable live album. I probably do fawn over it a bit more because I caught them twice on this run, but it’s an impressive display of a band now in total legend status still able to captivate with a brilliant set, and showcase a lot of new material in the process. Big props for this one.

Next week I’ll wrap up the series proper with a look at the most recent live record, a career-spanning set recorded in 2019.

The Iron Maiden Live Album Series

Live After Death

A Real Live One

A Real Dead One

Live At Donington

Rock In Rio

BBC Archives

Beast Over Hammersmith

Death On The Road

Flight 666

En Vivo!

Maiden England ’88

The Book Of Souls – Live Chapter

Nights Of The Dead – Legacy Of The Beast Live In Mexico City

The Iron Maiden Live Album Ranking

The Maiden Live Album “Wishlist”