EDWARD THE GREAT

What's the point ?

This is a seventy minutes long compilation with some songs from Iron Maiden which is supposed to be their best of. I regard both Beast Of Best and The Essential Iron Maiden to be a better album. That aside, what do we get here ? Well, essentially some of their best tracks. Then again, how is it possible to omit their best song ever from a best of compilation ? Hallowed Be Thy Name is Iron Maiden at their best. Both fans and band agrees about that. Why is it not here ? Why is one of their worst songs (Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter) included ? This was actually a song not even written for Iron Maiden. Seventh Son is represented with four songs, but their two first albums has no songs. The song Iron Maiden is not on this album whatsoever. That is a glaring omission. The inclusion of Flight Of Icarus is also strange. It is a good song, but not among their best songs.

This compilation album is not worthy the Iron Maiden trademark. It is to a large extent a rip-off. If you are new to Iron Maiden and you buy this album, likes it and then buy some other Iron Maiden albums; you are up for a shock. Edward The Great does NOT represent Iron Maiden and is therefore more or less a worthless compilation album.

Get one of the other compilation or live albums instead if you are curious about Iron Maiden.

4 stars for the songs 1.5 stars for the idea

= 2.75 stars.

'Edward The Great' - Iron Maiden (Compilation)

It's a difficult thing to make a great compilation for a band who's career has spanned decades. Iron Maiden is a band with a very heavy, dedicated fanbase, and as great fans will be, they will each have their own, very personalized views on what the band's best moments are. To try to accomodate the whims of millions of people cannot be an easy task. As far as being fan- worthy goes, 'Edward The Great' won't tickle the fancy of many existing fans of the band. Besides some great artwork on the front, alot of these songs will have been heard by fans many times over, and there's alot of songs that would have been so great for this compilation ('Aces High,' to name one of them) that were left out.

For starters however (who aren't nearly as demanding,) it's a for a first look into the band's style and sound. And there's some very cool artwork for the completionists out there!

ack when I was first getting into music in high school, the first band I ever set out to get any albums for was Metallica. What does this have to do with an Iron Maiden best of? That was as close as I ever came to being a fan of metal. I put out my feelers and picked up some other albums just to see if the genre was right for me. Edward the Great was one of those albums. Metal and I were simply not to be. While there are certainly things I can appreciate in small doses at the right time (like say the movie Heavy Metal), I could not get into it like Metallica. Eventually that love faded to when I came across Rush then was given a link to PA found Yes and never looked back.

Edward the Great has a lot of well known songs by Iron Maiden. Some of them really do a good job of showing how cool a band Maiden could be, like Run to the Hills and the Number of the Beast. The album as a whole though I found pretty boring. So much of what I heard simply sounded the same. I think that is the great weakness of compilations, you really aren't hearing the work as the artists themselves intended. Rather, just what some record exec felt were some well received tracks. PA has a lot of well reviewed albums by Iron Maiden, and I think I will check them out some day. Edward the Great has however turned me off of Maiden and it'll take some time to recover from that. There is so much else out there that is worth my time and yours. I don't think anyone should waste their time with Edward the Great. I wouldn't even suggest it to a completionist, because they'd have no use for a best of comprised entirely of singles.

Iron Maiden - Edward the Great, The Essential Iron Maiden, Somewhere back in Time

Iron Maiden is a British Wave of New Heavy metal band with a thick metal sound and innovative and melodic songwriting. Throughout their career they managed to widen the boundaries of the heavy metal genre whilst influencing ALL metal bands that ever existed. For fans of progressive music the epics on the albums like Hellowed be Thy Name, To Tame A Land, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, etc are a real treat because of the intelligent song-writing and the extended instrumental/melodic sections of the songs. The guitar- solo's of Iron Maiden are always amazing.

I know this is perhaps an unusual affair, but I wrote one review for these three Iron Maiden's greatest hits albums. Why? Because they are basically flawed because of the same reason.

Iron Maiden fans don't need best offs (they got plenty of great studio albums) and if they want 'greatest hits' they can go tho some the bands great live performances like Live After Death and Rock in Rio. The releases of these compilations are solely based on commercial interests of the management of the band.

Iron Maiden had this use development in their thirty year existence. On the first two albums there were punk and rock'n roll influences with the great lead vocalist Paul Di'Anno. After that came the melodic and often epical metal with Bruce Dickinson as a front-man. On the Somewhere in Time and Seventh son albums Iron Maiden were very progressive and experimented with synthesizers and concepts. The tenth and eleventh album have some art-rock influences and have Blaze 'the fans hate me' Baily as a vocalist whilst from album #12 and after that Iron Maiden regained their melodic metal style with Dickinson again as the vocalist.

Making a compilation of all these different styles is utterly useless. The difference between the sound of the band in thirty years make the cohesion of the songs disappear, whilst a live album can melt styles together as can be seen on the Rock in Rio dvd.

For proggers these compilations are even worse. The hits of Iron Maiden are the most non- progressive songs of their albums (with some exceptions). Often the longer tracks on the albums are the highlights of their compositional capabilities.

Conclusion. Don't buy. If you are interested in the band I would recommend to start with Rock in Rio or one of their first seven studio albums. If you want progressive influences try Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. For fans of the bands this compilation is useless, you'll already own the songs and you don't want to be bothered by there misplaced appearance. One star. Not even important for hard-core fans.

Released in 2002, 'Edward the Great' is a compilation album by Iron Maiden that focuses mainly on the bands singles and "hits", as opposed to songs that are generally favored by fans. As a result, while it's a decent enough selection, it's also very predictable.

Of course, the music itself is still great! I mean, come on, it's Iron freaking Maiden! 'Run to the Hills', 'The Trooper', 'Can I Play With Madness', '2 Minutes to Midnight' and 'The Number of the Beast'... these are all iconic metal classics! However, there's a lot of songs missing, even by 2002, there was an absolute wealth of material that should have been included on a release such as this, but wasn't due to time limitations.

Overall, you're better off going for 'Best of the Beast', especially if you're new to the band. Despite being released six years earlier, it has a more well-rounded track listing, and the packaging as a whole is a lot nicer, with more pictures and detailed information on the band. Leave 'Edward the Great' to collectors like me.