• • • • • Like all proper legacy artists, have given their studio output a buff and polish in recent years. The sixteen albums they released between 1980 and 2015 have been remastered and re-released on vinyl and through iTunes. And today, the metal titans announced that they will be issuing all the albums anew on Digipak CDs as “The Studio Collection – Remastered”. “We’ve wanted to revisit these for a long time and I was delighted with the remastering we did in 2015,” bassist and founding member Steve Harris said in a statement accompanying this announcement. “I thought it was the best that our albums have ever sounded and it was only right that we made them available on CD now, too.”. The new Digipak releases, sourced from the 2015 hi-res digital remasters, will be released chronologically over the next nine months in batches of four, starting on November 16th with the re-release of Iron Maiden, Killers, The Number of the Beast, and Piece of Mind.

Synergy editor. Fresh off of the success of 1984’s ‘Powerslave’ and the 1985 live album ‘Live After Death’, Iron Maiden were well and firmly at the top of the metal world, and their run of strong releases would continue with ‘Somewhere in Time’, an album which saw the band continue to enter progressive territory with their writing, with longer songs and the addition of keyboards. Iron Maiden’s bright shows were attracting everyone’s attention, including attention from representatives of various labels, and by 1979 the band signed the contract with EMI. Thus, in 1980 the band’s debut album Iron Maiden was released and it got excellent reviews from the critics.

Fans will also have the choice between a standard edition of Beast or a special boxed set that comes with a collectible Eddie figurine and a patch. These first four are available for pre-order now. From there, Maiden will move through their catalog, dropping four-disc batches in February, April, and June of 2019.

And in each batch, one album will be given the collector’s edition treatment with a new Eddie figurine and patch. As well, all the remastered versions of these records will be released to streaming services. Maiden, who just wrapped up a leg of their career-spanning “Legacy of the Beast Tour”, are already making plans to continue that jaunt into 2019. The only thing on their calendar right now is a headlining stop at Brazil’s Rock In Rio Festival, but future tour dates will be announced before too long.

Fresh off of the success of 1984’s ‘Powerslave’ and the 1985 live album ‘Live After Death’, Iron Maiden were well and firmly at the top of the metal world, and their run of strong releases would continue with ‘Somewhere in Time’, an album which saw the band continue to enter progressive territory with their writing, with longer songs and the addition of keyboards. However, stylistically this is still very much Iron Maiden. By this point the band have clearly defined their sound, and there’s not much point in tweaking what already works. With blistering guitar harmonies and wailing vocals, Maiden have clearly hit their stride by this point in their career. The use of keyboards adds an atmospheric, spacey feeling to the music, giving ‘Somewhere in Time’ its own identity amongst the bands discography.

With a solid production and some of guitarists Adrian Smith and Dave Murray’s finest guitar tones, the sound here is timeless. Even after all these years, the album holds up well for both its sense of melody and its metal edge.