Josh-da-man

Bruce has to learn how to fly a 747 first.

BearFan

Apparently he go certified on it .. I have to wonder when the guy ever sleeps. Seems that he has a zillion thinks going on at once

slop101

Album's leaked, if anyone cares.

hdnmickey

I've been reading many reports of people downloading the "leak" only to find somebody has slipped in a collection of older songs renamed to look like Book of Souls. It would be awesome if Maiden themselves were behind it.

I'm going to be picking up the CD on Tuesday. It's rare that I trust a band anymore to do a blind buy, but Maiden is one of the exceptions.

cdollaz

New releases are on Friday now. Just want to save you a wasted trip to the store.

dvduser6

Maybe a dumb question: is the limited edition book version only available via their website, or will this be in stores on release day as well? Amazon only shows an import listing for $39.99 while the Iron Maiden website version is $17.99. I love limited packaging, but I wish it was easier to figure out sometimes .

hdnmickey

When did that happen? Last few new release CD's I purchased still came out on Tuesday.

But now that I look closer I see that at least this one is indeed Friday Sept 4th. Thanks.

hdnmickey

I wouldn't count on many stores carrying many copies of the book version. Some may not carry it at all.

I'm still trying to find something that shows more than just the cover. Any place got a run down if exactly what's in there? Personally, after having bought the tin version of The Final Frontier online (and regretting it) I'm leaning towards the regular version. But I could be swayed if the book really is THAT cool. The tin sucks, would have never bought it if I saw in person first.

hdnmickey

You know you wanted to play the game after watching the video. They made it happen:

http://speedoflight.ironmaiden.com/

BearFan

Album has leaked. Damn good half way through

stvn1974

It is like the band found out what my favorite parts of the last four albums are and made this just for me. Outstanding.

hdnmickey

I was sent the real leak about an hour ago. Listening to it now. First impression - unless the quality of this leak suffered somehow, the comments about the poor production on this album were spot on. But the songs themselves are up to Maiden par!

Phodg

Meh. It's decent, but not great. And yeah - the production sucks ass.

B5Erik

I've been listening in bits since Saturday, but today was the first time I had a chance to really listen to much of it in order. And I still haven't had the chance to listen to the whole thing in order.

I love it. No, it's not Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, Powerslave, Somewhere In Time, or Seventh Son good, but it's not far off. It's right below those albums, even with A Matter of Life and Death, and just ahead of Brave New World, IMO. It is a really, really good album - amazingly good given the age of the band members and the amount of time this band has been together.

And the audio production isn't that bad. It's not really good, but it's OK in a middling sort of way. Kevin Shirley is a lousy mixing engineer. It's fine to let him produce, but his mixes all sound flat and midrangey. It's like he has a hearing problem.

But the production is really close to being a good fit for the songs, so it doesn't hurt much if at all.

If you like Maiden you'll like this album.

morriscroy

Only reason I picked up the tin box version of The Final Frontier, was seeing it for around $10 at Costco. (Most likely the record company was dumping the remaining inventory via Costco at the time).

If I had never seen the tin version, I probably would have picked up the generic version.

EddieMoney

Agreed. The production won't blow anyone away, but it sounds much cleaner to me than the past Shirley jobs. Oh, and the songs...fucking fantastic. Bruce's best vocals since the reunion.

morriscroy

Same here.

Though for me, I'll only do blind buys of Maiden's studio albums.

I thought their last several live albums/videos seemed kinda superfluous. (I didn't think any of them were better than Live After Death).

Supermallet

A Matter of Life and Death is my favorite of the reunion albums, so this bodes well!

I'm not bothering with the leak, but I'll be hearing it soon enough at this point!

hdnmickey

Sorry, but the production is THAT bad. Although from some strange reason, some songs are worse than others. I'm holding our hope that some of this is some loss of quality in the process that created the leaked version. But if the CD's sound like this, it's as bad as Death Magnetic or Vapor Trails before they created Vapor Trails Remixed. Will not keep me from buying it. But like Vapor Trails it will be a grin and bear it activity because of the awesome songs.

morriscroy

I usually cranked up the bass on the entire "A Matter of Life and Death" album. Somewhat more bearable than the original raw sound (with flat eq).

On the other hand, Death Magnetic seemed like it was beyond repair. I was unable to find any eq settings to get it to sound more bearable.

Hokeyboy

Got tickets to see the Iron Maidens perform at the HOB Anaheim, which will also be a "listening party".

Yaaay....?

morriscroy

I haven't either. I couldn't be bothered anymore.

As far as I'm concerned, most likely it will sound like typical classic Maiden. (Similar to how just about every AC DC record sounds the same. Ditto similarly for bands like Motorhead, Cannibal Corpse, etc ...).

Supermallet

I've been listening to the reunion albums in anticipation for the new one, and I have to say that I never gave Dance of Death enough credit. What a thoroughly excellent album.

morriscroy

Of the post-reunion Maiden albums, ironically the only one I listened to a lot over the years was Dance of Death. Though for reasons completely unrelated to the quality of the songs.

It turns out my cd copy of Dance of Death, had some nasty "copy control" drm on it, which made it difficult to rip back in the early-mid 2000's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_Control

What made it difficult to rip were the "deliberate bad sectors" drm type protection. At the time it took awhile to get a rip that was error-free, where I wrote my own software to handle such discs. (Years later, eventually some computer cd/dvd-r drives were designed at the hardware/firmware level, to recognize and handle such "copy control" audio cd discs with deliberate "bad sectors drm" protection).

From attempting to rip this basketcase cd numerous times over the past 12+ years, I got to listen to the album over the and over again.

morriscroy

Some day when I'm at a record store (the few remaining), I'll pick up a more recent pressing of Dance of Death which doesn't have any "copy control" drm on it.