I'm doing something I don't think I've ever done before and just listening to their live albums only.
When done please post a quick synopsis/review with your rankings. Would enjoy reading your thoughts.
I got done with listening to all the Reunion live albums, all six of them. They are all great and really fun to listen to and I'd rank them all a min 9/10 and just nitpickiness makes some more preferable than others. In terms of ranking
1. Rock In Rio
2. Death On The Road
3. Flight 666
4. The Book Of Souls - Live Chapter
5. Nights Of The Dead, Legacy Of The Beast- Live In Mexico City
6. En Vivo!
All of these I'm commenting on the CD mix, all but Mexico City have a video counter part and a 5.1 mix so not reviewing those. The latest two live records sound a bit odd in how they're mixed on the CD, I listened to some of the tracks more than a few times and I read up that those two were not mixed by Kevin Shirley who's been with them this whole time since Brave New World. It's a shame though apart from Dance of Death, all the albums have an amazing mix and sound IMO. I feel he's nailed the sonic presentation of the three guitar's spatial positions and tone, both studio and live. The last two live albums also have a really weird audience mix, like really weird at times esp during the choruses or any crowd singing part. The guitars sound is 'mild' is the term I would use. When you listen to any of the other Kevin Shirley mixed live records you can notice the difference right away, I guess it doesn't have that punchy crunchy sound. In any case it was just a strange realization for me since I got so used to the first four album vibe those last two stuck out quite a bit. Weird audience and muted guitar tone aside, the performances are great and Bruce does sound tired on the Mexico City album and even out of breath several times something I think I've never heard before.
Rock in Rio is still my favorite of the bunch, it's got so many amazing things going.
- Incredible crowd, their clapping along in Blood Brothers is my favorite crowd involvement moment. Their singing along is incredible at times.
- First live mix of the triple guitar and really well done. Blood Brothers is probably the best song that illustrates the 3 different guitars during that middle clapping section leading to the ripping Janick solo
- The intro/banter to some tracks is something that's hardly there in later releases. I love these bits "Something old, something new, something from our Jurassic period.. WRATHCHILD!!", "Into the valley of death rode
the six hundred... cannon to right of them, cannon to left of them, volley'd and thunder'd... THE TROOPER!!!!"
- Dual lead solos! The Trooper and The Evil That Men Do having Adrian and Janick do the leads together gave me massive chills on first listen.
- Sign of the cross is hypnotic, I think I listened to this track the most when I first bought the album in 2002.
- I can't believe this show was almost 20 years ago.
Death on the Road
- Paschendale and Dance of Death are so good live, the live performance of Paschendale is what made it my favorite track of the album. It's epic in every sense.
- I'm really glad they played Journeyman, it's a great track and I like it more live.
- I misremembered how good the whole album sounds, if the tracklisting had another song or two from Dance of Death like Face in the sand or Age of Innocence it would've been perfect.
Flight 666
- Largely Live After Death part 2 with some SIT and SSOASS thrown in and Fear of the Dark added for good measure. While not comparable to the original it's still a fantastic set of performances of the older tracks with the reunion band and a modern updated sound and mix.
- Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Wasted years are the standout tracks for me, totally engrossing.
Book of Souls Live Chapter
- Love that they played Children of the Damned and unconventionally ended with Wasted Years. Also has less of the usual bucket of songs they play in the end of every concert with just the three (Fear of the dark, Iron Maiden and Number of the Beast)
- Even though I've mentioned the mix is a tad disappointing hearing the new album songs live more than makes up for it. I just wished they had released a bluray video release rather than the stupid youtube concert.
Live in Mexico City
- More deep tracks and finally something official from AMOLAD! Any song would've been fine and they chose one of the best ones.
- The version of Sign of the cross is great but doesn't feel as hypnotic as the Rock in Rio version
- Bruce definitely sounds very different here, off night? a bit breathless at times. I have to remind myself the guy is over 60 and was treated for cancer.
- The guitar tones reminds me of the Virtual XI era guitars and those Blaze albums didn't particularly have appealing production to me even though I really like the albums.
- Crowd noise is really weird, sounds like some robotic demonic voice when singing the choruses.
- The song selection is what puts this album above En Vivo.
En Vivo!
- I need to listen to this album more, I think I was bummed they never released an official live recording of A Matter of Life and Death since they played that album in its entirety during the tour and didn't even have a track on this release. When this came out I was having Maiden fatigue and sort of never listened to the album that much. Plus at that point you were getting the album for just the 5 new songs as everything else had already been played in the recent live albums.
- This album again has a great mix of the guitar and the crowd is pretty loud, the new songs shine live.
- This really isn't a bad live album, it's just the timing was odd for me and having very few new tracks really didn't make me want to revisit the whole album.
Might just watch the counter part concerts before tackling all the pre-reunion live albums. There are quite a few of them. I think I counted 7. Should be a fun listen.