Tag: metal

Sonata Arctica – Dark Empath

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week2 Comments

So I started this blog in August of 2021, after a few months of planning beforehand. I can’t count the number of times I’ve planned something for this and then been derailed by new releases and information.

I had intended to do an Iron Maiden album ranking as one of my first posts, but just as I was beginning to plan this all out in early 2021, Maiden announced a new album. Took me two years to do that ranking.

I also recall having a post about the fantastic movie This Is Spinal Tap ready to go when, just hours before the post, the actor who portrayed drummer Mick Shrimpton died. I went ahead with the post, but the eerie timing was just unreal.

And now, a new one – a few weeks back I was planning a huge post about something I had originally teased a year or more ago. Sonata Arctica, the stalwarts of Finnish power metal (and far beyond, honestly) have a complicated and intertwined series of songs known as the Caleb Saga that paints a deep and dark picture and runs through a lot of the band’s career. The main story tells a tale of lovers and adversaries Caleb and Juliet. It’s not just lovers – this saga involves a lot of early abuse and neglect, a whole truckload of stalking, and at least in the given canon ending of the saga, Juliet’s ultimate and only way out via dispatching Caleb. (that means killing)

But there are a few other songs tied into the Caleb saga over the years that aren’t necessarily canon in terms of how the story flows, but they are thematically tied to the same pair. They can be considered alternate endings or parallel dimensions, whatever you wish. But it’s a songwriting well that Tony Kakko goes down a fair bit for inspiration and almost always cranks out a belter when he does.

My intention is to compile a post detailing the entire Caleb saga. There are five past Sonata Arctica songs tied to this saga over the band’s career, which began in 1995 but started proper in 1999. They came into form in the early 2000’s, and by 2004 they had found solid ground as a band equally owing to European power metal and American prog/classic rock with Reckoning Night and among that album the excellent song Don’t Say A Word, the “second” part of the Caleb saga and where it became a multi-song story in the first place.

I have previously covered Don’t Say A Word as part of a now-defunct series, but the words written remain true and it is one of the best highlights of Sonata Arctica’s catalog. It brought the Caleb saga to life, and the band has run with the premise for 20 years since it became a true story.

And, as I more than mentioned earlier, my posts often get thrown off just before I go with them. I have what is currently the base of a Caleb saga post ready to go, just needing to cross a few t’s and such. And, here comes the inevitable curveball.

Sonata Arctica are due to release a new album on March 8th of this year. Clear Cold Beyond is not just a statement of fact regarding where the band live in arctic Finland, it is the group’s 11th studio album. It is the first album in 5 years, after a few acoustic tours and dealings with COVID.

Now, none of this is new information. The band released this info back in November, along with the album’s first single First In Line. But it’s the newly-released single Dark Empath that gains the attention today.

I’m sure the hook here is obvious since I’m 600 words into a post about Sonata Arctica, a new album and the Caleb saga. But if anyone is missing the point, Dark Empath is the newest entry in the Caleb saga. From interviews Tony Kakko has given, this song is not necessarily “canon” to the saga but is another branch of it. This occupies similar space to 2019’s song The Last Of The Lambs from Talviyö. While that song might be considered a hair “light” in relative terms to this dark stalker saga, I don’t think Dark Empath treads as lightly. This is a very dark and all-encompassing song, the narrator who is presumed to be Caleb is still stalking his prey, presumed to be Juliet. But Caleb sees weakness in Juliet’s new love and is ready to bare all to her, exposing her own inadequacies as well as his. And Caleb continues with the “one and only” talk, as if Juliet can only belong to him after all they’ve been through, which in canon involves ignoring the fact that Juliet killed Caleb for – you guessed it – stalking.

I don’t really know what keeps Tony Kakko involved in still writing these songs after all this time, clearly it’s a wellspring of inspiration for him. But here in 2024, a full 23 years since the song The End Of This Chapter and the kick-off to this long-winding saga, we get a new song to fortify this winding story, and one on an album that the band has promised to hold closer to the group’s older legacy.

So at some point in the near future, probably after this new album releases, I’ll deliver my long-overdue post on the whole of the Caleb saga, as twisty and turning as it is. But until then, we get this new entry to the series, and one I’m very happy to hear and I feel slots well alongside some of the absolute bangers the band have already offered in this story, including one of their best songs. March is proving to be a very busy release month for metalheads, and Sonata Arctica have made sure to call attention to their album.

Mercyful Fate – Don’t Break The Oath

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the Week12 Comments

This week it’s back to 1984 and it’s time to look at an album that can only be called one of the most influential records to the entirety of heavy metal.

Mercyful Fate – Don’t Break The Oath

Released September 7, 1984 via Roadrunner Records

My Favorite Tracks – Gypsy, The Oath, Desecration Of Souls

Mercyful Fate formed in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1981 and by 1984 were on to their second full-length record. The band were quickly making waves on the back of the Melissa album, but were also running into issues while on tour – an opening spot for Ozzy Osbourne was canceled due to illness, and a UK tour with Manowar was scrapped after a single gig when the members of Manowar acted like assholes to Mercyful Fate. But the group of Danes were poised to become one of metal’s most noteworthy acts regardless.

The band’s line-up was the same as the debut recording – the guitar tandem of Hank Shermann and Michael Denner, Timi Hansen on bass, Kim Ruzz on drums and one Kim Bendix Petersen at the mic. Mr. Petersen is obviously far more recognizable by his stage name of King Diamond.

While Mercyful Fate would go on to influence metal bands all across the spectrum, their own sound was fairly traditional metal, along with a few prog elements. The themes were greatly influenced by evil and the occult, and whether or not many like this band or not comes down to King Diamond and his falsetto delivery. That tends to be the sticking point for some.

Don’t Break The Oath comprises 9 songs at around 43 minutes, an album of pretty fair length. Some reissue versions include the demo Death Kiss, which is an earlier form of opening track A Dangerous Meeting. It has been reissued several times again over the years but is almost always the original tracklist when done.

A Dangerous Meeting

Killer riffs open this dark story of a group who looks to lead a séance. “They should have known not play with the powers of Hell” says one line in the song, and the group meets a gruesome yet rather undefined end as their summoning attempt goes awry. This one stays fairly simple for the first few minutes, with a great Denner guitar solo, then shifts tempo a few times to close out this cautionary tale of playing games with dark forces. Some bells ring us out to close this excellent opener.

Nightmare

Up next is another grim story, this of a nightmare someone has of a witch coming to life through a book and convening her coven to sing and drive the subject mad. This nightmare is recurring every night for the tormented narrator. The madness is highlighted at the end with King Diamond’s tauning wail “you are insane!” And, like all of these songs, there are some fantastic solos from both Denner and Shermann.

Desecration Of Souls

This song is a dank as a dungeon, it descends to the bowels of Hell itself. It is the soundtrack to some various hijinx going on at a local cemetery – necromancy, cult lust and even weeping widows don’t pass muster on this unholy ground. This song has a very nice, primitive feel to it.

Night Of The Unborn

The guitars here have a very nice “classic rock on steriods (and a bit of evil)” feel to them. King Diamond goes full-on with the falsetto here, he is unrelenting in his delivery on this song. The restless spirits of the unborn are coming out tonight to haunt the priest, their attack represented in a guitar frenzy at the end of the song.

The Oath

Now on to what many consider to be the masterpiece of Mercyful Fate. This song gets going with an eerie introduction passage, building a creepy atmosphere for what’s to come. What is that? A fantastic rolling riff and a slam through King Diamond pledging an oath, and it’s not an oath of office. Ol’ Satan himself gains another devotee through this dark passage. This song is a magnificent triumph for Mercyful Fate.

Gypsy

A nice fat riff runs constant through this trek as a man discovers secrets from a gypsy woman in a caravan. In shocking news, we discover that both the song’s subject and the gypsy woman are children of the devil, I’m sure that was a twist ending no one saw coming. This is a quite simple yet very effective song that remains my favorite from the album.

Welcome Princess Of Hell

Another cavernous, classic rock meets evil song here. The title might suggest a date between King Diamond and a princess of Hell, but the title is actually a typo – it was supposed to be “Princes Of Hell” and King is having a crystal ball Zoom meeting with them. The actual lyrics do reference the proper “princes” as opposed to a singular “princess.” Either way, it is yet more thunderous evil mischief to dig into.

To One Far Away

A brief instrumental provides a short respite before the final bellow of evil. Very nicely done guitars here and a song that’s in and out quickly, doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Come To The Sabbath

The album closes with one of Mercyful Fate’s most beloved songs. Unlike the opening track where a group of novices meet their demise at the hand of dark magic, here a group that know what they’re doing are out to petition the Dark Lord for favor.

The favor is a specific one, with ties to the band’s prior album – here, Satan is being asked to place a curse upon the priest who executed Melissa, the namesake of the first album and a witch who was the object of affection for the narrator. It would mark the first hints of King Diamond’s long running interest in storytelling across multiple songs, as well as the witches who would be the subject of many of those stories to come.

Don’t Break The Oath was another shot across the metal world by Mercyful Fate. The band would continue to be one of the most widely-cited influences when anyone from any shade of heavy metal talked about what led them to play. In fact, this album wasn’t the only metal masterpiece conceived in their own rehearsal room – in early 1984, Metallica used the room and MF’s gear to practice for the recording sessions for Ride The Lightning, which was recorded in Copenhagen.

Metallica have been very loud about their love for Mercyful Fate, constantly citing them as influences, doing cover versions of MF songs and having the band appear at Metallica’s 30th anniversary concert. But Metallica is far from the only one – Mercyful Fate’s influence covers the scope of thrash, death, black and other forms of metal through the 1980’s and beyond. It is rare to encounter a band or artist who wasn’t led down the dark path by MF and especially this second album.

For Mercyful Fate themselves, they wouldn’t last a whole lot longer after the album. Hank Shermann wished to write more commercial music, something which King Diamond was totally opposed to. King would leave Mercyful Fate and start his acclaimed solo career, while the rest of the members pursued other projects. The band reformed in 1992 and had a solid run of albums through the end of the decade, they have been largely on hiatus since but have made occasional live appearances and are said to be working on a new album.

But for fans of heavy metal, the shadow cast by Mercyful Fate and Don’t Break The Oath is long, and of course full of darkness and evil.

Armored Saint – March Of The Saint

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the Week7 Comments

This week it’s back to 1984 and the debut album from California’s Armored Saint. They were a band without a scene to really “fit in” with, but they would go on to claim their own territory in the overflowing landscape of 1980’s heavy metal.

Armored Saint – March Of The Saint

Released September 26, 2984 via Chrysalis Records

My Favorite Tracks – March Of The Saint, Glory Bound, Can U Deliver

Armored Saint formed in 1982 in the US music epicenter of Los Angeles. They released a self-titled EP in 1983 and then quickly turned around to record their debut full-length. The band was nearly struck with member poaching just as they were getting off the ground, as singer John Bush was offered the vocalist position in Metallica. Bush turned that role down to focus on Armored Saint, creating one of heavy metal’s biggest “what if” moments.

The band on the debut comprised of Bush, Dave Prichard and Phil Sandoval on guitars, Joey Vera on bass and Gonzo Sandovol on drums. They had played together in various forms through their school years and this band naturally formed out of those prior relationships.

The album was produced by Michael James Jackson, who was fresh off a turn at the helm of the Kiss albums Creatures Of The Night and Lick ‘Em Up. It was not to be a match made in heaven, as Jackson was indifferent about heavy metal and the record label was micromanaging the band’s sound to create a polished offering that they thought would appeal to the masses. Joey Vera relays in this 2006 interview with Full In Bloom that the recording process of the debut left Saint disillusioned about the album’s mix and heavily in debt due to excess time spent in the studio. Vera said in the interview that the band was still in debt from that record all those years later.

While the recording process and the business end of music left Armored Saint worse for the wear, there still is an album of music to discuss here. In practical terms, this band were the heaviest thing coming out of Los Angeles, as thrash was mainly a Bay Area construct. Armored Saint didn’t really fit any of the burgeoning subgenres – they were far too heavy for hair metal and not fast enough for thrash. This could be described as US power metal, as that sound could fit a number of bands. Overall, Armored Saint were just plain old heavy metal, though.

Today’s album comprises 10 tracks at 38 minutes of runtime. The album was given a 2006 reissue by Rock Candy with a few demo bonus tracks added on but today I’ll focus on the original offering.

March Of The Saint

The opener offers a tie-in to the band’s name and is a decently paced roller that offers some nice melodic guitar accents to keep things interesting. The band’s true strength is revealed early as John Bush offers a full-throated, powerful delivery that stands apart from the all-out scream that many metal singers were going for at the time. The lyrics serve up a “war and metal” analogy that was par for the course in heavy metal at the time but it’s executed nicely here.

Can U Deliver

The next song did get a single release and also got a fair bit of traction on MTV. A quick look at its Spotify played count indicates over 8 million streams, dwarfing the six figure counts of all other songs on the album. This song did catch on, that’s for sure.

This song does sound like it straddles a line between metal and sleaze rock. The music itself is crisp and solid, though the production is a bit thin. The song is about being out on the prowl for a one night stand, though the lyrics are fairly vague and don’t descend into self parody.

Mad House

This one is a good banger of a track that’s maybe again a bit hampered by production but the song still comes through. It’s all about going to that place everyone knows is crazy and having a good time. It should not be confused with the 1985 song Madhouse by Anthrax, of course, though John Bush would later have the opportunity to sing that one too.

Take A Turn

Here’s a ballad or perhaps ballad-like offering. The song does add enough drive and pace to keep it out of total ballad territory. It’s a hook-up song, all about “taking a turn with me.” It’s again kind of vague and the lyrics aren’t immature or silly. The song’s execution keeps it from being something that could derail the album’s momentum.

Seducer

It’s another “sex” song as the title clearly indicates. Again the song works in the context of the album with Armored Saint’s able playing and John Bush’s visceral delivery. It seems like a song written to fit into the 1980’s scene but Armored Saint retain their identity on it rather than going all the way with the attempt to “fit in.”

Mutiny On The World

We exit the realm of hooking up for a bit and dive into one of metal’s tried and true archetypes, that of rebellion. The verses lay a bit quiet and let John Bush snarl through them. It’s a remarkable track that again would have benefited from a beefed-up production.

Glory Hunter

The next track really shines and feels like a truly realized and fleshed-out concept. It’s a dark tale of battle against native tribes set to music that certainly slots in well in that US power metal slot with some shades of the old familiar NWOBHM. It’s a bit of a shame the band weren’t allowed to operate more on this theme.

Stricken By Fate

The song is a tale of lovers broken apart and the wish for vindication or even revenge. The music is totally on point and keeps the album feeling cohesive. Some really cool guitar work on this one too.

Envy

Another kind of scorned lover track, this one sees the narrator looking at his partner moving on with someone else and the envy associated with that. It’s done pretty well musically and it’s a bit more of a mature and complex look at feelings that are often expressed simplistically in music.

False Alarm

The album closes on a pretty heavy jam that kicks the pace up a few notches. There isn’t much going on with the lyrics, it feels like a group of words thrown together to be able to use “false alarm” as a chorus. But the song hits the right spot even without a plot.

March Of The Saint is quite a triumph in that Armored Saint were able to forge a sound and identity even with being pushed by producer and record label to record songs that fit with the music of the time. The album remains cohesive and and gets through with all of the tracks feeling like they fit, nothing comes off as filler here.

The album was not a huge success commercially, though it did sell 125,000 copies in its first year of release and gain some buzz with Can U Deliver getting MTV play. Armored Saint would often find themselves with some hard luck in terms of trying to make it, but on the other hand they did get their name out there and are one of the more respected institutions in US heavy metal.

It would be a long and winding road for the band, who would suffer the loss of guitarist Dave Prichard to cancer in 1989, then go inactive in 1992 when John Bush took the open Anthrax singer job. Saint would regroup through the 2000’s and press on with albums and touring and also retaining their core line-up sans Prichard.

But in the framework of 1984, Armored Saint were a new force on the scene. They might have suffered a bit from not having a “scene” to be a part of when things were going either hair or thrash, but they were able to establish their own identity and set themselves on the path to becoming one of America’s classic metal acts.

Nine Inch Nails – Burn

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week1 Comment

All the holiday stuff has me messed up and I could have sworn yesterday was Tuesday when it was Wednesday. On well, I’ll be a day late and at least a dollar short.

This week’s highlight song comes 1994 and the soundtrack to the film Natural Born Killers. Trent Reznor was the producer of that soundtrack so it’s not shocking that Nine Inch Nails wound up on the album. In fact, three NIN songs are found there, though Burn is the only one that was new. Burn was also released as a single from the soundtrack but either did not chart or chart info is not available.

Burn is also available on certain reissues of The Downward Spiral.

As for Burn’s place in the film, that is information that is a bit tough to track down. It does appear at the movie’s end in certain “director’s cut” and unrated versions of the film, but is not present in the theatrical release and many modern versions on streaming.

Burn is a song very indebted to the electronic soundscape, something Reznor had pursued a lot on his 1994 album The Downward Spiral, often hailed as his magnum opus. Burn does cut a fair bit heavier than a lot of TDS material, something of a callback to the 1992 EP Broken. There is distortion on pretty much everything in the song save vocals. Things do build somewhat quietly to an angry climax, but it is still very noisy even in that build.

Lyrically, Burn is a song of hatred and misanthropy. It is lashing out at being a reject of society and using the hurt and anger to seek revenge and burn the world down. It is extremely harsh stuff, perhaps dismissed by some as angsty nonsense, but qutie disturbing in an objective evaluation. It was the perfect song for a movie about a killer like Mickey Knox, a person who was pretty well cursed from birth and would embody the song’s lyrics in his actions through the film.

Burn got a music video, culled from scenes of Natural Born Killers that are all apparently cut from the original movie release. (no verification on that) I will post the video below but it is from an unofficial source and might not escape the wrath of YouTube AI copyright hunter bots.

Burn has been in pretty regular rotation in Nine Inch Nails live setlists – it is the band’s 14th most played song with 404 total airings, according to setlist.fm. Sadly they didn’t play it when I saw them live in 2000, but you can’t win ’em all. Its appearance on the 2007 live video release Beside You In Time is hailed as a standout of a fantastic live set.

This song did get some sideways glances in 1999 after the Columbine High School massacre. The killers were fond of Nine Inch Nails and often incorporated The Downward Spiral lyrics and references into their journals. The band took a fair bit of heat as a scapegoat for the murders and Burn was referenced a fair bit as a conduit to world decay, but in the end everyone moved on and NIN pressed on along with Burn.

In the end, Burn is a fantastic cut from the impressive Nine Inch Nails catalog. It fit the movie it was written for like a glove, and the song has gone on to be a feature in live sets even without the benefit of appearing on an album. It is “angsty crap,” but there’s something more visceral and real about this sort of angst. It is more than hollow-heading ranting at something just for fun, this is a true connection to the type of rage and anguish of being a “failed” member of society can bring.

Twisted Sister – Stay Hungry

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the Week11 Comments

Welcome to 2024, how exciting to now be close to halfway through this psychotic decade. This also does mark the 40th anniversary of 1984 and many of the world’s most brilliant albums being offered up, so I will be paying extra attention to that year as I go along through this one. I won’t be covering it every week but many of 1984’s great releases will come up this year. And what better way to kick things off than with the magnum opus of one of rock and metal’s more unique acts?

Twisted Sister – Stay Hungry

Released May 10, 1984 via Atlantic Records

My Favorite Tracks – I Wanna Rock, We’re Not Gonna Take It, The Price

By 1984, Twisted Sister had finally been releasing albums after a decade of busting their asses on the club circuit on the US East coast. Their first two albums had come and gone without a ton of fanfare, and the group were truly hungry to get a break. Between this collection of outstanding songs and some publicity assistance from politicans’ wives, Twisted Sister were about to have their break.

Twisted Sister would feature Dee Snider on vocals, the guitar tandem of Eddie Ojeda and Jay Jay French, Mark Mendoza on bass and A.J. Perro behind the drums. This was the band’s line-up through the first four studio albums, this one being the third. This would also be the band’s reunion line-up through the 2000’s until the death of Perro in 2015.

The album was produced by 1980’s rock maestro Tom Werman, who had a hand in many of the decade’s defining records. Dee Snider has been on record criticizing Werman’s tactics during the recording of Stay Hungry. Werman denies Snider’s accusations and states he only suggested the band consider a Saxon song as a cover for the record, not that there was any attempt to remove the two songs that became the band’s hit singles – I Wanna Rock and We’re Not Gonna Take It. This Blabbermouth article from last month gets into a lot of detail regarding what both Werner and Snider have said.

With all that, we’re left with an album of 9 prime rock cuts in a pretty lean 36 minutes. A huge deluxe reissue of this album features a whopping amount of bonus material and is certainly worth the purchase, though today I’ll confine discussion to the original album. There is also a re-recorded version the band did in 2004 called Still Hungry. Not a bad effort but in my eyes an unnecessary venture, as I generally agree with Werman that the album is fine as is.

Stay Hungry

The opener is also the title track and comes in hard and heavy. It is a simple and very effective message of keeping motivated and fighting on, pretty much the story of Twisted Sister at this time as they fought long and hard for the success that this very album would bring. This is a straight ahead roller of a song with some nice guitar work to keep it moving along.

We’re Not Gonna Take It

This was the album’s lead single and the vehicle that Twisted Sister drove to mainstream attention. The song insanely simple with a rhythm clearly borrowed from the Christmas hymn O Come, All Ye Faithful. This is, of course, a far more rocked-out version as it heads into the chorus and the song’s obvious point of being a rebellion anthem.

Aiding greatly in the song’s rise was the music video, which featured the band in a dark, clownish parody of glam, especially Dee Snider standing out as a nearly indescribable presence. The video starred actor Mark Metcalf, famous for his role as Niedermeyer in Animal House, as a cranky, overbearing father who gets his ass handed to him through the video.

This song would chart at 21 on the Billboard Hot 100, a career high for the band. It would also come under fire from the PMRC, the Tipper Gore-led group looking to use music as a scapegoat for society’s ills. This wound up on the list of the “Filthy Fifteen” due to “violence,” none of which can be found in the song and only a slapstick version with a trained actor seen in the video. Dee Snider would famously testify at the Congressional hearings and own the day, leaving the overly concerned senators with egg on their faces and Twisted Sister with their signature song and biggest hit that continues to resonate today.

Burn In Hell

This one comes in dark and hot with an intro that sounds like Alice Cooper is reading it, but alas he is not present. This one is about getting your shit together lest you burn in Hell, like Dee as the song’s soul-scarred narrator. It’s a very nice headbanger that keeps things going and differentiates TS from the more polished glam era that was arriving.

This song also got airtime in a movie, as the band performed it as part of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.

Horror-Teria (The Beginning)

Up next is a two-part story piece introducing the sadistic child killer Captain Howdy. The PMRC picked a fun song about nothing violent to complain about when there was a literal song about a serial killer just two songs down on the list, but what do I know …

The first part of the song is Captain Howdy, a killer who preys on children. It’s a nice and heavy piece, warning the listener to “stay away from Captain Howdy.” The second movement of the song is Street Justice, which is the response from people outraged over the Captain Howdy murders. Howdy was let off of his court case through a technicality, and the only real way to bring him to justice now is to form a posse and hunt him down. A story song seems ambitious on the surface for a band generally dealing in simpler concepts, but this works really well and isn’t a dull spot on the album.

Captain Howdy would make it to the silver screen years later as the antagonist in Dee Snider’s 1998 film Strangeland, played by Snider himself.

I Wanna Rock

The album’s second single would also become a defining song for the band. It is another defiant anthem, this time simply stating the desire to rock. Sometimes the best songs just spell out what they’re doing and it makes a hit.

This video would also feature Mark Metcalf’s acting, this time portraying a jerk of a teacher. Twisted Sister would often stretch this song out for an extended jam live, which sounds odd on the surface for a simple, short rock song but I’ve always enjoyed their live jams of it.

The Price

We are now to the ballad, though this one is not the cut-and-paste style of love ballad at all. This is an earnest, sad song about how tough it can be to “make it” in life and the doubt over whether it’s worth it or not at times. Snider reportedly wrote this after the band were abroad recording their prior album and he’d had very little contact with his own family. It is a very moving song that has a message that carries through to this day and, while this single did not generate a hit, is still an integral part of the Twisted Sister catalog.

Don’t Let Me Down

This one is a simple and effective rocker that sees Dee questioning why nothing he does or gives is enough. While not a standout track it’s still very nice listening on an album that doesn’t really have any “filler.”

The Beast

This is fairly standard type of “predator and prey” song that a lot of bands do. Here’s it’s executed in a slower paced yet very heavy metal presentation. Some very nice, soulful guitars on this one.

SMF

The album closes on what could be considered Twisted Sister’s theme song. SMF stands for “sick motherfucker,” of course, and this name would be given to Twisted Sister fans and even the fan club. It’s another TS classic and it’s also one that Snider had to explain in front of the congress hearings for the PMRC.

Stay Hungry would be the hit record Twisted Sister had been in hot pursuit of through the 1980’s. The album hit number 15 on the Billboard 200 and was certified triple platinum in the US, and has platinum certs in several other countries. The band was thrust into the spotlight with their singles and videos, and then propped up again with the press from the PMRC hearings. The success also lifted their prior album You Can’t Stop Rock n’ Roll to gold status, and caused a hunting frenzy for the out of print, independently released version of their debut Under The Blade.

Lasting success through the rest of the ’80’s proved elusive as the band’s next two albums were not well-received. But the band’s return during the resurgence of traditional metal in the 2000’s would see them tour far and wide, establishing their legacy without the need for new material.

Twisted Sister’s wild ride led to paydirt with Stay Hungry, and it remains a solid classic and a great representation of the music of 1984.

Iron Maiden – My Live Album Wishlist

On By bigbadburchIn Iron Maiden Live Album Series21 Comments

It’s time to wrap up the Iron Maiden live series, as well as wrap up 2023. This final post will look at a series of tours and concerts that are not officially available as live albums that I wish were. While Maiden have cranked out the live records to the tune of 13, there are several periods in history that are missed and today I’ll be looking at some of those that I’d like to see officially released.

And yes, there is a key word here – “officially.” Most anything I’m going to discuss today is available as a bootleg. But I’m concerned with the (usually) top-quality efforts the band and label release themselves. Also, some of these bootlegs are not easy to find outside of digital download form. Try digging up a physical copy of the 1985 Rock In Rio appearance, it’s kind of ridiculous.

Before I get into specific time periods I’ll go over what I’d like to see overall, since it’s very easy to look at another band and see what they’ve done. Kiss have issued an Off The Soundboard series of different concerts through their career. The packaging is no-frills and minimal, but the point is people get a show that otherwise wasn’t released officially. The Kiss issues have been well-received and I have a few of them even though I’m not a die-hard Kiss collector.

So that’s what I’d like to see from Maiden, is an occasional live release series. Things don’t have to be packaged to the gills or anything, though for Maiden there would need to be some sort of Eddie artwork. But I don’t think it’d be too difficult to pull off an annual or semi-annual release series of shows that aren’t represented already by a live album.

Now, will this happen? I kind of doubt it. I think it makes sense to do, we as Maiden fans are gleefully willing to part with our money for random shit, so getting more live stuff out there wouldn’t be a bad choice. But as many know, Steve Harris is a total control freak and often won’t let a release out without him going over every detail with a fine-tooth comb. He would have to relent some on his micromanaging vision to let a fair bit of archive live material out, as no one has time to go over everything in microscopic detail. Will he do that? Again, I kind of doubt it.

But for the sake of argument let’s say the Captain is agreeable to this archive live idea. What stuff do I want to see? Let’s get into it.

The Somewhere In Time tour

This tour cycle came and went for Maiden, then they jumped straight into Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son and left a lot of SiT sitting on the shelf. They have given the album more live time in ’23 as part of their current Future Past Tour, and rest assured we’ll get a live set from that probably in ’25. But that still leaves the original tour for the album in the dust.

There are well-regarded bootlegs out there for this tour, in fact it’s a pretty hot commodity on the unofficial market as the album was glossed over in years after. There is a Paris performance that I’ve heard previously that is quality, and I’m sure there are several other worthwhile sources for a decent live record. This would be towards the top of the list of tours I want an official representation of.

The Rock In Rio series

Maiden first played this festival in 1985. They released their 2001 performance in the Rock In Rio album and video set. They’ve also played in 2013, ’19 and ’22. And it’s possible I missed a performance in there, all of this shit is listed on one huge Wikipedia page and it’s easy to miss.

But there are four other shots at live stuff there, if only to complete a bit of a vanity series. No need for a video portion or an all-out blitz, these could simply be released as no-frills packages. I do have a bootleg of the 2019 show and it’s overall very good, just with a bit of wonky guitar frequency by way of Nigel Tufnel at the Air Force base in one spot. But for the kind of release I’m envisioning that would be fine, I’m not out for everything to be the out-and-out best stuff ever.

More early stuff

We do have several live EP’s and other collections of Paul Di’Anno-fronted live stuff, but what’s the harm in more? There are some very good sounding radio broadcast bootlegs in circulation and there’s no reason a few of those couldn’t be selected for official release. I wouldn’t mind more archive-style stuff from the early days, it wasn’t a long time period but there’s a fair bit of material out there. There is also an opportunity to release the full version of the Maiden Japan EP, as expanded bootlegs do exist. Why not fill out the performance?

The Blaze years

There is no official live material from the time Blaze Bayley fronted the group. This is understandable as the period is not the band’s most celebrated. But I think it’d be nice to have an official live document from this time.

There is a caveat – Blaze couldn’t sing the Bruce stuff like Bruce could, which on the surface is fair since no one would accuse Blaze of being Bruce. But the band flat refused to step down in scale to accommodate Blaze, which I consider a mistake. I do have some bootleg Blaze stuff and I think it works fine so I don’t have a problem with it, but there are a lot of fans who would be vocally against it. They aren’t writing my wishlist though so screw ’em.

A Matter Of Life And Death

The 2005 album was hailed as one of the band’s best and Maiden took the extra step of performing the whole thing live. After the tour, Maiden transitioned to a retro setlist which came to life in the Flight 666 album and film. This had the side effect of shelving a live release for AMOLAD.

There has also been a lot of chatter that the tour wasn’t as well-received as Maiden hoped for. While the die-hard fanbase was totally up for it, often concerts are filled with more casual fans who aren’t as up on current material, and playing all of the album threw off some attendees. I don’t know any of this for sure, but there’s enough speculation out there to give credence to this line of thought.

With all that said, I want nothing more than an official release of this tour. It would probably be the most unique Maiden live set, with only their current tour rivaling it for interesting cuts. The tour is heavily bootlegged, but I see no reason to shelve an official release of this. And this one could come with all the bells and whistles of a typical Maiden live package, it doesn’t have to be minimal like I’d accept for the other stuff listed here. This one does rank at the top of my wishlist.

I think that about covers it. Sure, I’d love a live release from the Piece Of Mind tour and even No Prayer For The Dying, we might as well have something official for each album cycle and honestly we’re not too far off. Neither of those feel essential, though PoM would probably be well liked.

That covers what I’d like to see for future live Maiden releases. I’m sure we’ll get one for the current tour Future Past, and at some point in time we’re going to have that sad farewell tour and I have no doubt Maiden will release that as well. I’d also speculate that maybe there’s room for one more studio album and a live set focusing on it, I have no clue what the band’s plans are as time goes on. But I hope there’s a will for Harris to let someone go through the archives and release all this and other stuff. I suppose we will see. This does wrap up the Maiden live album series – for now, there is no doubt that it will expand in the future.

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” (you are here, and you made it to the end!)

Iron Maiden – The Live Album Ranking

On By bigbadburchIn Iron Maiden Live Album Series18 Comments

I’ve spent the past 13 weeks going over each Iron Maiden live album, and now at the end of it all it’s time to give them a proper ranking.

I will only be including the full-length, official live albums in this. The EP stuff like Maiden England is out, as is any kind of bootleg. The list on the bottom of this page has a link to the post where I discussed the album in detail.

This ranking is pretty fast and loose, this is not a series of conclusions reached after careful, strained analysis. It’s just a big vibe check more than anything, ranking live albums is kind of ridiculous and I’m only doing it because these guys released 13, and counting.

13 – A Real Live One (1993)

This is easy to rank, pretty much because it sounds like shit. It’s an awful sound capture or mix or whatever. It is potentially interesting given that this does represent well the band’s early ’90’s era which didn’t get hardly any live airing after these tours, but it really hurts this album that the exact same songs from the same tour can be found on another live album. This one is totally skippable.

12 – A Real Dead One (1993)

This companion to the spot below it offered up the band’s classic era and early hits. It sounds way better than the other one. But the performances are a bit lacking in dynamics, the setlist isn’t really inspiring since it’s all stuff you can hear in any number of other places, and almost all of these songs from this tour are found on another live album. This one isn’t a total wash but it doesn’t serve much of a purpose, either.

11 – Nights Of The Dead (2020)

This is the most recent one to date. It’s got a cool theme with the tie in to Day of the Dead. The sound is fine, if not just a hair off. Bruce doesn’t sound his best on here due to illness and it does affect the performance. The setlist is mostly obvious stuff but that’s to be expected from a career-spanning set. A few gems on here and overall it’s a pretty cool album but it has it faults.

10 – Flight 666 (2009)

This is another “hits” set with all but one song from the ’80’s. It all sounds really good and showcases the band in very fine form. It sits a little lower on my rankings because I’m drawn more to the live sets that highlight specific albums. Ranking this one here isn’t meant to be a knock on this album at all, it’s just that others serve my purposes more.

9 – The Book Of Souls – Live Chapter (2017)

A nice package that sums up the tour for this album very well. It does focus on the 2017 version of the tour and I would have preferred the 2016 setlist, but that’s a minor complaint. It’s a good effort and does a good job showcasing the album that this tour was supporting.

8 – The BBC Archives (2002)

This is very cool series of small sets that give us a bit of official material with Paul Di’Anno live. It’s a great look at the early years and even has a few songs with guys that weren’t in the band very long. This is more of a treat for die-hards but it’s executed in splendid fashion, this die-hard is very happy with it.

7 – Live At Donington (1993)

3 live albums in one year and this one renders the others obsolete. This is a complete show from the hallowed festival grounds and has almost all of the songs featured on the other two releases. Stuff here sounds good and it’s the best way to experience ’90’s Maiden, even if it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

6 – Maiden England (1988, 1994, 2013, etc)

Released in different forms several times, the 2013 complete issue is the one to seek out. This captures the band in a prime era for them, on the Seventh Son tour and with a lot of those songs making their way here. The sound is a few steps down from other recordings but it’s still a worthwhile listen. Hard to beat this setlist, even if they forgot to play The Trooper for whatever reason.

5 – Death On The Road (2005)

The live set in support of Dance Of Death is here and it’s a really good offering of the stronger tracks from that album alongside a collection of the band’s usual classic offerings. Paschendale alone is worth the price of admission.

4 – En Vivo! (2012)

This set is pulled from the tour for The Final Frontier album. Beyond just being a showcase for that stuff, this actually breathes new life into those songs and gives a looked-over album some great representation. Great sound, great crowd and everything here clicks.

3 – Rock In Rio (2002)

This offering was the conclusion of the Brave New World tour and the first live release since the band’s reunion in 1999. The album they were touring on was fantastic and it’s featured heavily here, paired with two special songs where Bruce performs Blaze-era material. This was a very exciting album and tour for the band and began a new chapter of their legacy that is the band’s longest and runs to this day.

2 – Beast Over Hammersmith (2002)

This gig from 1982 sat for a decade before an official release in a box set, then 20 years after that it got cut on vinyl for the first (official) time. This set is a total home run, showing off the band on the Beast on the Road tour and letting the world know just how great their new singer Bruce Dickinson is. Killer performances from front to back and it obviously features a lot of early material as they only had 3 albums to work off of back then.

1 – Live After Death (1985)

It’s hard to top the granddaddy of them all and for Iron Maiden live albums, this is it. Their first one is also still their best, capturing the group at their peak in the Powerslave era. It’s a magnificent set and features the band at full energy and performing many of their best tracks.

And that will do it for the live album rankings. I’ll surely be revisiting this one at least once more and maybe many more times. Christmas will be over in a few days but I’ll still put a bow on this series next week with a look at some tours I wish we had live albums for. ‘Till then.

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 (you are here)

The Maiden Live Album “Wishlist”

Nights Of The Dead – The Iron Maiden Live Album Series

On By bigbadburchIn Iron Maiden Live Album Series17 Comments

This series is winding into the home stretch now as we’ve reached the end of the list of Iron Maiden live albums. Of course this is “for now,” as I’m sure at least one more is to come, and quite possibly several if not many more over the years. This will be a “living” series, for sure, and I’ll update it when new albums are issued. But for now and most likely for at least another year until the Future Past Tour finishes up, this will be the last proper post.

This album was recorded over three shows in Mexico City in September 2019. It is evident that Maiden went into Mexico with the express purpose of recording a live album. It’s generally understood that they record all of their shows anyway, but it does feel as though they had their sights set on these performances.

This was the first stretch of the Legacy Of The Beast tour. This is entirely a hits set, the band had not released a new album since 2015’s Book Of Souls and it would be about a year after this live cut before their next studio effort.

Of course, we can look at the date 2019 and know that these concerts were performed just before the COVID pandemic that totally defined 2020 and changed about everything. Maiden’s run of the Legacy… tour was cut short and the tour was finally resumed in 2022. This newer version of the tour did alter the setlist to incorporate songs from the 2021 studio album Senjutsu, but today’s live set is all about the 2019 version of the tour.

There is on-theme cover art featuring a Day of the Dead-inspired Eddie. Some might call it cultural appropriation, I prefer to think of it as Eddie simply visiting the world. It’s one of the more interesting Eddie pieces of the past several years, for sure.

Let’s do the usual – go over the tracklist then have at the particulars of the recording.

Churchill’s Speech/Aces High

Where Eagles Dare

2 Minutes To Midnight

The Clansman

The Trooper

Revelations

For The Greater Good Of God

The Wicker Man

Sign Of The Cross

Flight Of Icarus

Fear Of The Dark

The Number Of The Beast

Iron Maiden

The Evil That Men Do

Hallowed Be Thy Name

Run To The Hills

First let’s go over song selection. The vast majority of this is the same as what I’ve said about most every other live album – a lot of the obvious songs are here. Given that this set was a career retrospective, it’s no surprise at all. The Trooper is here, Number Of The Beast, the ever-present Fear Of The Dark, and Run To The Hills closes things out. From top to bottom this is a pretty stacked selection of the vanguard Iron Maiden tunes. Hallowed Be Thy Name is back in the set after the band sorted a legal challenge in 2017.

There are a few sprinklings of so-called “treats” here. Two of those are The Clansman and Sign Of The Cross, songs from the Blaze Bayley years that are widely regarded as the best tracks from that period. This was the first time since the Brave New World tour that anything from the Blaze albums got a live spin so it’s nice to hear them brought out again.

There is a treat from the golden years, too – Flight Of Icarus had not been played live since 1986. This was a very cool inclusion for the Maiden faithful, it’s kind of shocking that this classic sat on the sidelines for all these decades.

For all the talk of how well-regarded Maiden’s reunion has been, there were only two songs chosen for this tour from this era, Maiden’s longest run of consistency. The Wicker Man is one, the lead single from Brave New World has previously been in the set for the En Vivo! Live album and has been a part of several tours over the years. I’m a bit shocked the band didn’t include Blood Brothers, as that song has been a true anthem, but Wicker Man is totally an enjoyable track and there’s nothing to complain about.

The other reunion cut is the true gem, if not total crown jewel of the bunch – For The Greater Good Of God marks the first and, to date, only appearance of a song from A Matter Of Life And Death on an official Maiden live release. The album was played in whole on its tour cycle but no live record came from that, and then no song got back in a released set again until this tour.

And they didn’t just pick any old song from the album either – this one is an outstanding epic track, the twisted tale of religion and man’s fallacy is one of the best cuts from that album. For me this is the true reward of this live set.

Now let’s move to production and sound quality – overall it’s pretty good. I do think it’s a shade off of the prior two live releases, but things are broadcast pretty clearly without any real issues. I don’t know what night’s performances were chosen for inclusion on the album or what might have been messed with under the hood, I tend to think things were released “as is,” which is usually (but not always) the case with live Maiden.

And finally I should look at the band’s own performance, where honestly, we do have an issue. Now the band is in good form, nothing here sounds off or bad. I don’t know if this set really goes the extra mile compared to past live releases, but it’s all good in terms of the instruments.

There was a really big issue during these Mexico shows, though – Bruce Dickinson had the flu during the Mexico run. And yes, it’s pretty noticeable that Bruce is off on this album. Some songs sound better than others, I’d say Where Eagles Dare is the one that really sticks out as there being something wrong. On others he sounds maybe a bit labored and not hitting the highs of his youth, but still getting things mostly sorted.

I’ll say that I don’t think Bruce’s performance was total dogshit or anything like that, it doesn’t ruin enjoyment of the album for me. But it is there and is noticeable, and no matter my fanboyism of this band, I can’t sweep it under the rug. Now, I will say that the flu was the most likely cause here – there are other concerts from this tour and Bruce sounds way better on them. I have a bootleg of the Brazil show, and the Stockholm show is one many cite as the one that maybe should have been released as the live album. Bruce is spot on in both of those shows.

It does beg the question if maybe Maiden should have chosen a different show for the live release, but that’s purely hypothetical since this is the album we have. While it is flawed in an unfortunate way with the member that many consider the band’s main selling point, I do think they still squeaked out with a pretty enjoyable product here.

The question is – where would I rank this among the other live albums? Well, find out next week when I do just that – rank all 13 of the live Maiden releases.

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 (you are here)

The Iron Maiden Live Album Ranking

The Maiden Live Album “Wishlist”

Slayer – Show No Mercy

On By bigbadburchIn Album of the Week9 Comments

This album just turned 40 years old last week. Let’s relieve some arthritis, check out senior discounts, and get into it.

Slayer – Show No Mercy

Released December 3, 1983 via Metal Blade Records

My Favorite Tracks – Black Magic, The Final Command, Die By The Sword

This is more than just the story of Slayer’s debut album, it’s also the story of the formation of Slayer. The band did not fiddle about with a ton of members before getting a functioning line-up together – the founders of the band were Tom Araya on vocal and bass, Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman on guitars, and Dave Lombardo on drums. The group initially played cover songs, stuff like Maiden and Priest as well as the highly influential Venom. Slayer would incorporate the leather and spikes look as well as Satanic imagery into their performances.

Brian Slagel, the founder of Metal Blade Records, happened upon a Slayer gig and got the group to commit to the third volume of the Metal Massacre compilation series. He also got the band into a recording contract and Slayer set out to get their debut album recorded. Metal Blade did not have financial backing for the album so Araya and King used their own money and borrowed more to get the album done.

This album comprises 10 tracks at a slender 35 minutes of runtime. I am not going to go through every one of them today, instead I’ll just give the tracklist and then go over some highlights.

Evil Has No Boundaries

The Antichrist

Die By The Sword

Fight Till Death

Metal Storm/Face The Slayer

Black Magic

Tormentor

The Final Command

Crionics

Show No Mercy

There are other versions of this album out and about, some have a package that includes the band’s next EP Haunting The Chapel, this is a CD I used to have way back when and kind of wish I still did. There are others that have various bonus tracks.

The sound on this album is one that can be surmised from the bands Slayer were covering in their first days – this is a mix of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, along with a heavy dose of Venom and Mercyful Fate. I’d hesitate to call this thrash, though Slayer are clearly a defining band of that genre. This is a bit of something else, maybe speed metal on Satanic steroids. But it also isn’t really wrong to call it an early thrash banger.

This album is brash and rough, though it does flow and is very listenable. It does not descend into a near parody of heavy metal in the way many might say Venom did. While this wasn’t produced by a mastermind of the studio (Slayer self-produced along with Brian Slagel), it also isn’t crude and unwieldy the way, say, Sodom’s debut stuff was.

The dissonance that would come to define Slayer’s music was already present here, with super fast riffs running along with Tom Araya’s vocals, which for this debut could be found in the higher register. He stayed in his more usual pocket for a lot of stuff but would let out a falsetto scream on many occasions, something in keeping with King Diamond. It’s also something we wouldn’t get much more of as Slayer charted more of a thrash course and Tom decided to preserve his vocal chords for a 26 year long career of belting out some of the most subversive heavy metal to be found.

This album can be reviewed fairly simply, it is an all-or-nothing affair if a person will get into it or not – it’s an early heavy metal album, very heavy, that sets a course for being the truly monstrous stuff that a lot of other acts got accused of being through the 1980’s and the Satanic Panic. The riffs and drumming are lightning fast, if not necessarily constructed in the greatest songwriting fashion. Yet, it all holds together far better than a lot of other examples of “rough” early ’80’s metal that didn’t wind up being massively influential. These songs are “on the rails,” if only just barely, but there is a cohesive unit here.

I will say that I absolutely love this album, it is one of my favorite Slayer records. It is not their defining sound by any means, we’d get that a few years later on Reign In Blood and beyond. But this one has a very nice quality in its rawness, yet still being a functional unit. We can praise Venom all day and night for being the forefathers of the extreme metal that would come, but Slayer and Mercyful Fate were the two early bands that made this sound like actual music.

If there’s a song that hints at the Slayer to come, it’s Die By The Sword. This brutal tale of ancient warfare give the staccato, militant sort of rhythm that Slayer would employ as they went along. It remained a staple of the band’s set throughout their career, being the most-played live song from this album (just ahead of Black Magic). What Slayer was to be was truly found in this grotesque epic.

But that isn’t to discount the rest of the record – personally, I love it all. The Antichrist is a high-pitched attack that goes as fast as it can, while The Final Command builds in pitch through running riffs and Dave Lombardo’s psychotic drumming ability. Tormentor is a tale of night stalking that sees some fantastic early Araya screams, and the closer Show No Mercy is an early showcase of how the NWOBHM influenced the next generation that would be called extreme.

Show No Mercy was the first salvo from what would become a heavy metal icon. It was somewhat immature and not expertly executed, yet it works in its juvenile and unformed charm. The record would do wonders for an early Metal Blade Records, selling over 20,000 when the label had nothing that had hit over 5,000 at the time. And Slayer would be off and running, launching a tour that recruited family members as the road crew.

It would only be a few years before Slayer truly broke through, becoming one of the Big Four of thrash metal on the back of their genre-defining Reign In Blood album. But Show No Mercy should not be overlooked, nor should its follow-up Hell Awaits. This was the true bowels of heavy metal in the early ’80’s. Parents and the wives of politicians might have been upset over what a lot of other bands were doing, but Slayer was on a whole other plane of existence from that.

The Book Of Souls: Live Chapter – The Iron Maiden Live Album Series

On By bigbadburchIn Iron Maiden Live Album Series19 Comments

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”