I've noticed that all the albums with the slipcase exteriors have finally been going from $15 to $10, so I picked up The Number Of The Beast, Piece Of Mind, Somewhere In Time, and Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son yesterday. Feels good to finally be getting more IM in my collection; all I had before was The Final Frontier.
Continuing on, a few days back I bought the following: s/t, Fear Of The Dark, and A Matter Of Life And Death. So now I've got about half the discography. So far, all the albums have been very good; it usually comes down to me liking about half the songs, and being sort of indifferent to the other half.
And then there's A Matter Of Life And Death. Holy shit. It's been quiet a while since I've been able to say I've loved every song on a single album, but every song on this album clicked for me. Especially amazing since I've been listening to all the IM albums I own this weekend and this came at the tail-end when I was getting weary. The only gripe I'd have (and it's very minor since I love every song anyway) is that a lot of the songs sound kind of samey. I mean, how many begin with that slow, acousticy build-up. At any rate, my favorite IM album so far, and could very possibly sneak it's way into my top 20 favorite albums ever.
I guess a little con is that I've owned The Final Frontier since it was released, always enjoyed it, but now it seems like a step down from AMOLAD.
Hoping to find more of the slipcase editions. I
just noticed that when you put them together on the shelf, the sides are forming a picture of Eddie, so I really want to complete that.