Iron Maiden - Maiden England (1994)^{Release ID: 103}

English heavy metal heavy-weights Iron Maiden & I have travelled a life-long journey together that’s been full of mind-blowing peaks as well as a few devastatingly low troughs but I’ve found their huge quantity of live releases to generally be pretty reliable over the years. Whether it’s their all-time classic 1985 double album “Live After Death”, 2002’s very solid “Rock In Rio”, their highly regarded underground bootleg “Beast Over Hammersmith” or their early Paul Dianno-fronted EP’s like “Maiden Japan” or “Live!! +One”, Maiden have invariably managed to reproduce the rollicking good time their obsessive fan base experiences at every show & is no doubt helped by the ridiculously large quantity of metal anthems they have access to in their back catalogue. I’d not heard 1994’s “Maiden England” double album before though & was feeling like some familiar tunes to rock out to while running some errands over the last few days so it fit the bill perfectly.

“Maiden England” is yet another double album/video package that has been remastered & re-released with the inclusion of a hefty amount of bonus material in recent years but I’ve opted to review the original version only for this exercise. On paper it really should be something utterly amazing too, at least for someone like myself whose favourite heavy metal releases of all time are Maiden’s more progressive late 80’s albums because “Maiden England” was recorded at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, England on 27th & 28th November 1988 on the tour for the “Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son” record. The tracklisting is everything you could want from such a show too in that it includes a bunch of the big tracks from “Somewhere In Time” & “Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son” along with a selection of old classics, a couple of which seem to have been intentionally selected as tracks that weren’t included on “Live After Death” in “Still Life” & “The Prisoner”. So the scene was certainly set for a truly transcendent live release from one of the best in the business & there’s no doubt that it’s delivered a worthwhile outcome but there are a couple of obstacles here that prevent “Maiden England” from being held up on the same sort of pedestals as some of the other releases I mentioned above.

The first issue is the production which, despite not being inherently bad in any way, is a bit lacking. The guitars are sitting a little too far back in the mix with the rhythm section being more prominent & Steve Harris’ bass guitar sounding very jangly indeed which sees some of these songs lacking the punch of their cleaner studio counterparts. But the main issue here is front man Bruce Dickinson’s vocal performance which is patchy to say that least. He gets the job done just fine on more than half of the tracklisting but there are a few tracks where he’s noticeably pitchy, particularly struggling to reach the higher notes. This sees undeniable classics like “Wasted Years” being reduced to just solid inclusions which is a real shame as there was so much potential in this tracklisting, even though those deeper cuts I mentioned earlier were never classics to begin with. It also needs to be mentioned that I’ve never liked Iron Maiden’s title track which closes out this release. It’s always lacked sophistication to my ears so it wasn’t the best way to finish things up in my opinion.

While “Maiden England” may not be Maiden’s best live release, fans of the band are unlikely to be left disappointed as it still ticks so many of the required boxes, especially in the tracklisting. The execution isn’t perfect but it’s very hard to be too critical of a band that stands out there on their own in the world of classic heavy metal. Put this release on at a party & you’ll inevitably have a bunch of drunken dickheads poorly singing along to every word after a couple of tracks & I’d no doubt be one of them.