EDWARD THE GREAT

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!

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.