[dl316bh]

Originally Posted by MsMarvelDuckie

Ooh Maiden!! You guys are "playing my song", lol! I saw them in 2013 as well, in Dallas. Alice wasn't opening for them here, unfortunately, but it was a great first metal concert for me. Mr D is a big fan of them and we both picked up shirts at the concert. He has even gone so far as to buy a couple of the Necco Eddie figs and he has a huge banner of him on our bedroom wall.

It was actually 2012 for me. Maybe that's why. July 16th show at Corfu in the Darien Lake Performing Arts Center. 2013 would have been the second/third leg of the Maiden England World Tour, so I'm not surprised the opening act changed by then.

Shame, too, because Alice Cooper is worth seeing. Dude still puts on a show, with all the props and stuff you expect, from the Frankenstein stuff to bringing out the snake for No More Mr. Nice Guy. It was a great bonus for me, because I was there to see Maiden, but I like Cooper, and his live show is worth seeing. If Alice Cooper comes around, I'd say go see him.

I got a poster and shirt from the event. They had a lot of variants, themes around cover art from earlier Maiden albums. I went with the Somewhere in Time one, because that's one of my favorites of theirs, though it's often overlooked when people talk about their best in favor of the first three with Bruce.

Iron Maiden are a curious case. They're known as a band that makes not great albums but great songs. All Maiden albums post-Killers have filler songs in it. Not that many of those songs are bad at all, mind you.

That's weird to me, because I feel like they're a band that doesn't have a lot of filler songs during their best periods, or ones I don't really love. I mean, Piece of Mind, sure, that might actually be the classic Maiden album I'm coldest on, but Powerslave, Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son don't have a single bad track on them. Number of the Beast has Gangland, but otherwise that one is all killer, no filler too.

The X Factor, his other album, is actually pretty underrated. man on the Edge is a great song, imo.

I'll agree with that. X Factor actually had a lot of great songs and Blaze did alright with them. Probably would have been much better with Bruce, but hey, it is what it is. Lord of the Flies, Sign of the Cross and Man on the Edge alone make it worth it. But Virtual XI was garbage. The only album of theirs I almost entirely dislike.

Some of the more recent Maiden albums haven't been that great but they're not terrible by any means, imo.

Of the five since they reunited with Bruce, I'm only iffy on Dance of Death. That one has some classics on it, but it also has a few that are a big self indulgent and even eye rolling when you actually read the lyrics (New Frontier is such "worrying about tampering in Gods domain" goofiness, even if it's catchy). But Dance of Death, Paschendale and Journeyman make it all worth it.

The other, though, I don't know. Brave New World and The Final Frontier are, in my opinion, on par with their best, with The Final Frontier so good that even the one song I listen to the least - El Dorado - is still really good. A Matter of Life and Death isn't far behind.

Book of Souls I could understand if you're not wild about, though. I like it, but found it to be a grower and a little overlong. That's sometimes the problem with double albums. It's really, really hard to keep two discs worth of new material great the whole way through. Judas Priest almost pulled it off with Nostradamus, but it lost some steam with Shadows of the Flame through New Beginnings before it closed out strong.

Ah the first two Maiden albums are very punk rockish.

Hell yes they are. I love those albums to pieces, but I don't bring them up a lot, because they're pretty different to what comes, being more of a punk metal vibe. Di'Anno was a great vocalist and probably could have been huge if he got his act together after Maiden canned him.

Also, let's face it, Ozzy has never been a world class vocalist.

I agree on Ozzy. He has a very distinct voice and was perfect for the vibe of Sabbath, but as an overall vocalist I've never thought of him as being particularly great. He had some good songs as a solo act, but was always an artist I cherry pick from in those years, as I don't love most of his albums all the way through.