The MAIDEN Years: 2018/19/20/21/22/ad infinitum (Rock in Rio and Nights of the Dead)

Mosh said:
Off topic and confirmed as a bootleg many times on here.
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OK, sorry I didn't know that as it was a friend of mine who sent me this artwork and the released date. But, I suspected that it was not an official release. I think this release can be interesting, though...
 
Mosh said:
I don’t mind jumping ahead a bit for this topic, it is difficult to talk about the solos on this album without comparing them to later albums. There are a few factors at play here. AMOLAD is the beginning of writing credits becoming less collaborative and varied, culminating in Senjutsu. Going back all the way to No Prayer through Dance of Death (with some exceptions, namely The X Factor) you start to see more input from Dave Murray. He has two writing credits on Virtual, three (!!) on BNW, and two on Dance of Death. Bruce is also working with all three guitar players on BNW/DOD. And, of course, Dance of Death is still the only Maiden album where every member contributes to the writing. A byproduct of this, imo, is more variety in the solos. Gers is a much more prominent writer on BNW/DOD so naturally he is going to get more solos.

With AMOLAD, the writing credits are a lot less even. Adrian Smith is the primary songwriter among the guitarists with 5 songs. Gers is down to only two songs and Murray only one. On TFF, this trend continues. Smith is up to 6 songs, Gers 2, Murray 1.

If there’s only one solo on an Adrian Smith song, Smith is going to play the solo. If there are two solos, Murray gets the second solo 99% of the time (that 1% being BTATS). So Gers is only going to get a solo on a Smith penned song if there are 3 solos. It also seems like on Dickinson or Dickinson/Harris songs, the solo is going to go to Adrian most of the time (and probably Murray for the second solo).

Looking at TBOS, we see some trends change that actually help Gers’ chances of getting a solo. For one thing, Dickinson is writing exclusively solo or with Smith. Based on the solo spread, it seems like Gers is more likely to get a solo on a Smith/Harris song than a Smith/Harris/Dickinson or a Dickinson/Smith song (is there reason to think Bruce isn’t as fond of Janick’s soloing style compared to Adrian?). On Senjutsu, these trends continue. Bruce only works with Adrian, and his input is limited to three songs. Gers has two songs again, we can probably assume solos on both of those. For as long of a track as it is, a solo on Senjutsu doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibilities (although it seems rare that a Maiden opener has more than 1 solo). The best news for Gers solo enthusiasts is 4 Harris songs. Harris tracks almost always features solos from every guitar player and they seem more likely to have more variety in the solo selection. Expect at least two Gers solos, probably more. For that reason alone, I expect we’ll get the most Gers solos on an album since the 90s.

P.S. I didn’t notice until this conversation that Adrian has a solo on every single TBOS song!
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Interesting.

A few hours ago I've started to make an "Amigos solo and songwriting overview of the 2000-2015 albums" (which we can update when the new album comes out).
 
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Brilliant write-up as always @Mosh. AMOLAD has a soft spot for me. I remember I got into Maiden when I was 12 after watching the RIR DVD, and shortly after I went up to the entire BNW album and got instantly hooked. Following that, I started to dig a little deeper into their discography, not always listening to albums as a whole (or in chronological order, for that matter), but instead searching for recommendations on Maiden brazilian FB groups and so on. I think the only albums I actually listened as a whole during that period besides BNW were Powerslave and 7th Son.

Oddly enough, I barely knew any AMOLAD songs because for some reason that album isn't nearly as beloved in Brazil when compared to the rest of the world (I guess that has to do with the fact that they didn't tour South America in 2006/07). I remember listening to some TFF tunes, DOD obviously and as said earlier, the entire BNW, so AMOLAD was the only reunion album I barely knew anything about. Then I found this forum, and everyone here seemed to love AMOLAD, so I decided to finally hear it.

At first, I didn't understand why it got so much hype. I felt it was overly long, with too many slow intros and kind of bloated. But there were amazing moments in it despite that, which made me want to hear it again. And again. And again. And it grew a lot on me, to the point I spent an entire month playing basically AMOLAD on my speakers, each time liking it more. Then I started to look up for videos of the 2006 tour, with the songs live, and as said before, the songs sound even better in a live setting. I fell in love with that album. It made me eager to actually dig deep into every Maiden album as I could find more gems like that. I consider it the album that made me a hardcore Maiden fan, instead of a casual one.

Talking about the album specifically, I'd say it's the crown jewel of Maiden's discography. It isn't my favorite nowadays, probably on the 3rd or 4th spot of my ranking, but I do consider it as their definitive album. I think it's everything 'Arry envisioned when creating Iron Maiden. It's got everything: it's dark, proggy, melodic and heavy at the same time. The three amigos are in full force, with remarkable riffs and melodies all the way through and also great solos that don't feel forced and instead really add to the songs. I think it's one of the albums with the least solos relatively (taking run time into account) on Maiden's discography and even then I feel it's an amazing guitar album due to most solos being memorable and also to the riffs and melodies mentioned above.

Also, the songwriting triad of Smith/Harris/Dickinson reached its peak on it imo. All of their 4 songs together are amazing, and you can clearly see that all of them made notable contributions to each of those songs. It's probably their greatest album lyrically as well, and I think Bruce's input has a great influence on that. Overall, I'd say is their most mature album and the definitive Iron Maiden sound (or at the very least the definitive reunion sound).
 
Mosh said:
Tragically, the band never released an official recording from this tour. It’s uncertain that there even is a good live recording (although they supposedly record every show). They prepared Donington 2007 for release (more on that later), but for the time being it doesn’t seem like we’ll ever get official AMOLAD content.
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Regarding that, we're able to see on F666 a clip of Steve mixing a live version of The Longest Day alongside Kevin.


We also have those B-sides of singles with a few live versions of the 2006 tour. I think footage is extremely unlikely (even though as you said, they should at least have the screen footage of all shows), but I actually believe they'll open the vault eventually and release a 2006 concert in audio.
 
Smither said:
I think it's one of the albums with the least solos relatively (taking run time into account) on Maiden's discography
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The album has 17 solos, if we count all Dave's short bits in Out of the Shadows as 1 (mega)solo in total. I would not count these short bits separately. These are too short imo to be called like that, nor would I see these as short licks and discard all this as a solo. TFF has 25 solos. Will count the other 2000-2015 stuff a.s.a.p.
 
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There is an incredibly good version of TROBB on Youtube, remastered by a fan. It sounds better than some of the recent live releases. He uploaded it a year ago, but I found out only this week.
 
Btw, with this thing about to wrap up and Senjutsu a little over a week away, here’s my tentative schedule for future postings if folks want to stay caught up:

Wednesday August 25th: 2008 (Flight 666)

Friday August 27th: 2010/11 (San Antonio 2010/The Final Frontier/En Vivo)

Sunday August 29th: 2012/13/14 (Maiden England, show(s) TBD (I want to do a show from the first leg but there’s a lot more content from 2014 so I might do two))

Monday August 30: 2015 (The Book of Souls)

Wednesday September 1: 2017 (The Book of Souls Live Chapter)

Thursday September 2: 2019 (Nights of the Dead)

Monday September 6: 2021 (Senjutsu, give it the weekend to marinate)
 
Lucas Lourenco said:
There is an incredibly good version of TROBB on Youtube, remastered by a fan. It sounds better than some of the recent live releases. He uploaded it a year ago, but I found out only this week.
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Which version are you talking about? Could you post it here?
 
Do we know how mixed the sound? Is it Kevin Shirley?

Also worth noting how dark the footage is. Hallowed and Iron Maiden from the same broadcast is also very dark. Maybe another reason why they never released it.
 
Lucas Lourenco said:
Yes, it is the official video, but the audio (and I think the video too) are remastered. Compare it to the version uploaded in 2011...
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It's from last year's Download official live stream. As the festival didn't happen due to the pandemic, they streamed a few tracks from Maiden's previous performances. The only newer version where these ones from 2007, they also remastered Iron Maiden and HBTN, if I reckon well.
 
Smither said:
It's from last year's Download official live stream. As the festival didn't happen due to the pandemic, they streamed a few tracks from Maiden's previous performances. The only newer version where these ones from 2007, they also remastered Iron Maiden and HBTN, if I reckon well.
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Didn't know about this stream last year, thank you mate. They should have done the whole show.
 
Lucas Lourenco said:
Didn't know about this stream last year, thank you mate. They should have done the whole show.
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There is whole thing on YT but it's 2nd hand...Download made a live stream, they didn't put the video for free viewing.
 
Flight 666
Just like the Somewhere Back in Time tour was meant to be a throwback to the World Slavery Tour, Flight 666 feels like a sort of remake of Live After Death. Not just with the similar setlist and stage, but the way it is capturing Maiden as a larger than life arena act. There’s more crowd noise, the rhythm section sounds huge, more stage banter from Bruce. Where LAD showed the band at the height of their powers with several sold out shows in LA, this album seems more aimed at showing how much of a force Maiden is around the world. We’re back to the A Real Live Dead One concept of selecting songs from several different shows, although this time it actually does feel like the highlights were picked. I also like that the track listing roughly follows the tour’s order, starting with the first show in India.

I actually really like this live album. It’s probably the closest Maiden has ever gotten to playing a greatest hits show, every song on here (with the exception of Moonchild) was either a live staple at some point in the band’s history, a single, or is prominent on Live After Death. I can’t imagine anyone going to this show and not recognizing pretty much every song. The previous three nostalgia tours were either career spanning (Ed Hunter and Give Me Ed) or they leaned so heavily into one period that they were heavy on deep cuts (Early Days). With this tour, it seemed more about using the Live After Death period as a backdrop to play the band’s best known songs. Honestly, I don’t think Maiden realized how successful this tour would be. I also don’t think they realized that the success of this tour would’ve continued into other tours (and continues to this day). I think they put together an arena ready show with all of the band’s greatest hits with the intention of this being the last time they would do a world tour of this scale playing venues of that size. It makes sense, most bands from their era usually had one big world tour in them but ran out of steam pretty quickly after. Maiden seems to be an exception.

So with that in mind, the SBIT tour features one of the band’s less interesting setlists. The only real surprise was Moonchild (which is an awesome one at that), otherwise most of this material had already been played by this lineup at one point or another. There are definitely areas where the set could’ve been improved, I wish they had thrown Children of the Damned and Phantom of the Opera into the 2008 leg, but digging deep clearly wasn’t the goal with this tour. On the other hand, even if it is fairly predictable material, they play it extremely well. Possibly controversial, but I think this is a better live album than Live After Death. Every LAD song sounds way better on this collection. Rime of the Ancient Mariner is immense, easily my favorite version of the song. The three guitar thing really comes in handy here and you get to hear some harmonies from the album that weren’t in the live version. Same with the song Powerslave, also Adrian plays a better solo than his original. You get the extra harmonies in The Trooper and finally all the guitar parts in Revelations (I know they had been doing this already, but this is the first time you hear it in an official live album). The non-LAD tracks are more of a mixed bag, but mostly good. Heaven Can Wait isn’t my favorite, although this is a rare moment where Janick taking Adrian’s solo is an improvement. Love the sweep arpeggios. Wasted Years is awesome, love the back and forth vocals in the chorus. Can I Play With Madness sounds a little bit better than usual, but I could still live without ever hearing that song live again.

This live album is just a ton of fun. It’s a nice survey of Maiden’s most well known classics and is a strong argument for the band being better live in 2008 than they were in the 80s. These are some of the best versions of those songs. Any accusations of Maiden being a cabaret act can go right out the window, considering this was bookended by a tour where they played a new album in its entirety and a tour where they stuck almost exclusively to songs from the reunion era. This was an awesome tour and this album features some of the best performances of the band’s career. Essential.
 
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