Rating compilations or tribute albums is certainly not the easiest thing. It requires a completely different approach than just giving an opinion on new musical material. When it comes to tributes, it is in a way new material since it is about versions of music that you have not been familiar with before. But since it is about several different artists performing material, it is difficult to find any form of cohesive continuity in the whole thing. Apart from the most obvious, that it is a tribute to a specific band or artist. In this case, it is about Iron Maiden, one of my absolute favorite bands and has been so almost ever since I discovered them sometime in the eighties.
This means that all the songs, with a few exceptions perhaps, are very, very good in their original versions. It is almost impossible to ruin them even if you wanted to, which of course is not the case since it is, after all, a tribute to the band from other bands. The song material is simply fantastic! You can take any “greatest hits” or “best of” and find ninety percent of the songs. That makes
it a bit boring and a bit unsurprising while of course it is as good as it gets.
Anyway, there are no direct surprises when it comes to the instrumental music and that is, like the previous reasoning, both good and bad. When it comes to the singing, however, some of the
bands have taken things a bit too far. There are various growls and similar techniques. Normally, I am not particularly impressed by these techniques but I think it is quite fun to hear these songs that way anyway. It is not great, but at least interesting! It is a contrast to how, especially Bruce Dickinson performs the songs in the original.
When you are going to rate an album like this, you naturally end up in a dilemma. Nothing on this album is better than the original in any way. And since most of the material is so strongly associated with the original performance, it becomes a disadvantage of the whole thing. But at the same time, the basic material is so good that you can’t help but like what you hear, and since it is after all something different from what you are used to, a new dimension opens up to the music.
It is difficult to understand the point of making new versions of some of the super classic songs, but at the same time, that is of course why they are included in a tribute like this. Who wouldn’t want to pay tribute to their favorite band with their own version of one of their songs? The rating then? Well, what can you say… They are basically good songs, good performances, some a little more fun than others.
Translation of a review I wrote in Swedish many years ago
