En Vivo!

A few months ago, Doug posted a picture on Instagram of all the Dickinson reunion-era Iron Maiden albums. Seeing the photo opened my eyes to actually how many of these things I was missing. As an Iron Maiden fanboy, I was ashamed of myself.

I'd originally passed on Maiden's En Vivo! record when it was initially released, as I'd grown tired of the band releasing yet another live album. After seeing Doug's photo, I was inspired to give it another go, and went out and purchased the blu-ray release. Man, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed watching it. The setlist was full of those reunion-era songs, and even though we have to sit through the millionth live version of The Trooper and Running Free, at least we get some interesting newer shit like The Wicker Man and Dance Of Death. That isn't to say the the new songs are better than the classics, it is just refreshing to hear something different.

After watching the video, it was only a matter of time before I grabbed the vinyl.

While picking up a couple of live Maiden bootlegs in the Hells Headbangers store, I spotted that they had copy of En Vivo!, and with more excitement than I ever expected to have for a live Iron Maiden album, I added it to the cart.

While I'm turned off by Maiden's insistence on releasing picture discs, and not just giving their fans a regular vinyl option, it is cool to finally have the artwork for the El Dorado and The Final Frontier singles. It is a shame they didn't release proper vinyl singles, and only went the route of digital and CD singles for these two songs.

The inside of the gatefold is a nice painful reminder that Iron Maiden didn't make a stop in Massachusetts on this tour, and in fact only hit 18 US cities, thus I wasn't able to see them this time around.