Disco de Iron Maiden: “Flight 666”

Then buy this.

In Febuary 2008, filming began on a documentary about the band Iron Maiden's most adventurous tour ever- The Somewhere Back in Time World Tour. The documentary was titled Flight 666 and released into theaters for one night only (I missed it :(). On June 9th, it was released on DVD and blu-ray, and along with it came a companion piece which was a 2 CD set, featuring all the recorded versions of the songs (plus 2) that made it into the movie.

Well, I'm happy to say that this is the best live album ever! Just Aces High alone is enough to make up for the lackluster Live After Death. This album is truly amazing on every count!

ACES HIGH (Mumbai, India)- After the churchill intro, the guitar intro begins, and then the band rush out on stage and give us one hell of a version of the song. Bruce's voice here is AMAZING!!!!! No struggling, he hits the notes perfectly. And everything just goes well.

TWO MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT (Melbourne, Australia)- This may be even better than the Rock in Rio version. The crowd are loud as usual, the band are really on fire here. Amazing!

REVELATIONS (Sydney, Australia)- HOLY FREAKING CRAP. They slowed down the playing a bit from the LAD version- it's a tad faster than the studio version, but only a tad. And Jan's solo here sounds great!

THE TROOPER (Tokyo, Japan)- Best, most chaotic, and heaviest version of The Trooper yet, plus we get some of Nicko's blistering foot speed!

WASTED YEARS (Monterrey, Mexico)- The third official live recording of this, and the best sounding one yet. H sings a bit during the chorus... he has a very unique voice. Definitely an amazing live version.

THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST (Los Angeles, USA)- Best version of Number of the Beast ever. Bruce is ON FIRE. Plus H improvises a bit here, which is a bit strange but cool since he is the "one messed up note and it's officially crap" guy.

CAN I PLAY WITH MADNESS (Mexico City, Mexico)- WAY superior to the Death on the Road version. Bruce sounds more up to shape here, and the solo is the best of any version of this song.

RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER (New Jersey, USA)- The 13 minute epic. Way superior to the LAD version- No struggling Bruce here, plus to the slow and creepy part, some more cool creepy sounds have been added. Plus Bruce's "RAAAAAAAIIIINNNN!!!!!!!" scream is... whoa.

POWERSLAVE (Alajuela, Costa Rica)- WHOA. THOSE SYNTHS. They add a more powerful and desperate feel to it- amongst Bruce's amazing voice. THis is the best Powerslave version yet, and yet the synths make it more powerful and add a tragic feel to the song, where you can sympathize for this pharoah as he's about to die.

HEVAEN CAN WAIT (Sao Paulo, Brazil)- I say this for everything, true, but BEST HCW EVER. Everything is up to speed, Bruce is on top of his game, plus the usual audience coming up on stage during the "WHOAAAAAA" part is awesome.

RUN TO THE HILLS (Bogota, Colombia)- The anthemic song from Maiden has an amazing rendition once again, definitely awesome!

FEAR OF THE DARK (Buenos Aires, Argentina)- The ultimate song for Audience participation... hearing this version brought back memories of the concert I went to. The band release us the best "Fear" yet!

IRON MAIDEN (Santiago, Chile)- The 2nd best sounding on the album! The outro, as usual, is just incredible... I get shivers thinking about it!

MOONCHILD (San Juan, Puerto Rico)- We never thought it'd happen, but it did- the opening track to Seventh Son being brought back to life! WAY better than both the Studio version and the Maiden England version, plus Jan's solo is AWESOME.

THE CLAIRVOYANT (Curitiba, Brazil)- Amazingly beautiful song, amazingly beautiful version too! I just plain love it. The 3 amigos do miss the guitar in the first couple seconds but then come back in, which I think sounds cooler. May be the best Clairvoyant yet!

HALLOWED BE THY NAME (Toronto, Canada)- WHOA. IN TEARS AT HOW AMAZING IT IS. EVen futher, it was recorded in my home country of Canada! BEst HBTN for sure... everything is just plain perfect. "See you in the summer"... that's true, I did see him (and them)- June 6th, 2008!

So in short, this is Maiden's best live album ever. Live After Death was cool, but THIS IS WAY BETTER. I listen to this album every day, and it's bar none, the best live album ever!!!!

I've got into Iron Maiden maybe 8 or 9 years ago, but I own all of their live albums and DVDs or VHS tapes (and all their studio albums as well).

I have got to say that this is without a doubt my favorite live Iron Maiden album to date. Not only because it has my favorite tracklist which I will mention later, but it's the best recording and best performances yet - yes, even better than Live After Death which is all I need to say about how top notch the performances on this live album. Any Iron Maiden fan knows how awesome Live After Death was!

And I nearly had an accident when I saw the tracklist. Four of my favorite Iron Maiden songs are Moonchild, Aces High, Rime of the Ancient Mariner and The Evil That Men Do, the latter being the only one that stayed in their setlist past 1990ish. The other three tracks made their way back into the setlist and onto this recording, as well as several other songs that haven't been on the setlist in some time (Powerslave, The Clairvoyant, Wasted Years, Heaven Can Wait, Revelations) as well as some of their most popular and some of their mainstays (2 Minutes to Midnight, The Trooper, The Number of the Beast, Run to the Hills, Fear of the Dark).

To be honest, if I made the setlist the only thing I would change is I might try to get Afraid to Shoot Strangers, Man on the Edge (which is a great song, especially when Bruce sings it), The Thin Line Between Love And Hate and possibly The Evil That Men Do and/or Infinite Dreams in there somehow. I'm happy enough having Moonchild, Aces High, Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Powerslave.

Flight 666 vinyl is truly stunning. The album captures their best performances and is a testament to how good they are live. Also, the pictures on each disc are extremely detailed and flawless.

The sound is amazing, though a little on the bass end of the spectrum: Nicko's drums are strong on this recording and really make listening a unique experience because you can clearly hear what he's doing back there. Adrian, Dave, and Janick all have a clear and distinct sound making each one distinguishable while the newer added harmonies for the old songs cut through nicely. Bruce is upfront and clear as always. Steve's bass cuts through and owns it's own part of the e.q. spectrum which makes for a bit more bunch. I really enjoy the sound on the record and it is a pleasure to sit back, listen and experience the 'round the world tour entirely on LP.

I saw Maiden at their last show in Ft. Lauderdale and I wish they would have added the extra material from the '09 set list to this live album. The way I see it, the more Maiden, the better. But that being said, There is plenty of music on this album. all the classics are here. It is truly awesome of Maiden to go out and recreate the Powerslave tour, film it, record it, allowing fans to relive those days while introducing new fans to their older material. Not many bands care about their fans as much as Maiden do and this is a gift to the fans.

I recommend this record to any audiophile and music fan out there with a passion for vinyl. Maiden did a great job.

Let's face it - every live Maiden album has had to live in the shadow of "Live After Death." LAD did what a live metal album should do - speed songs up that needed to be faster, crank the guitar overdrive so that they sound heavier, slow songs down that should have been slower, and have plenty of improvisation not found in the studio recording (I'm looking at you, Nicko!). LAD did just that, and in my opinion (huge Maiden fan, BTW), all other live Maiden albums that followed LAD choked. Hard.

Flight 666 delivers in ways that surprised me. When I first heard IM would be releasing a new concert CD, I thought "Here we go again, do I really need another version of 'Number of the Beast' or 'Hallowed Be Thy Name'?" But the set list here is different because the subject of the "Somewhere Back in Time Tour" was different. They were not promoting an album per se, but were attempting to deliver to us older fans a glimpse of what we could remember from 1985 (when I was just a wee teenager), and give the younger fans a taste of what it was like 25 years ago. But the setlist here does not disappoint. Many of the tracks are rarities ("Moonchild," for example), but all of them come from the golden age - Number of the Beast through Seventh Son (and they threw in "Fear of the Dark" as well, which is a big crowd pleaser in South America). At the end of the day, the set list is excellent.

The production quality is good, and I knocked a star off because it isn't excellent production quality. Sometimes the reverb gets a little overwhelming, especially from the larger venues. Also, the mixing of three guitars is still not right. On LAD, Murray's guitar occupied the left channel exclusively, and Smith's the right channel (Harris, Nicko, & Bruce were center channel, or both L+R in your headphones/stereo speakers). But with three guitarists, the mixing is all over the place. I noticed Smith's guitar sliding in and out of center channel like it did on Rock in Rio, and for the most part Murray is still on the left channel and Gers on the right during rhythm sections, but when one of them steps up to perform a solo, the signal gets weird and starts sliding around. I was hoping that the sound engineers would put Murray on the left exclusively, Gers on center channel (both L+R) exclusively, and Smith on the right exclusively. So just be aware that if you're wondering who is playing which solo, you might not get it right based on where their guitar signal "came from" just prior to playing the solo. Most fans probably won't care about this, but as an avid guitarist myself, I like to rack and stack the members of Maiden to see who has improved the most through the years (Smith, your solos still make me smile, man!).

Lastly, the CD is more pleasurable to me than the DVD because then we don't have to watch Gers make a fool of himself on stage by tring to act like Ritchie Blackmore and Pete Townshend.

Excelente escuchar de nuevo a Iron Maiden en concierto, despues de haber vivido el concierto en vivo y en directo... esta es la mejor recopilacion de toda la gira.

Up the Irons.