Best of the Beast [Best of]

This is the first thing I ever heard by Maiden . I quite hated it at first but as time passed I began to understand it better .
One fine day I realised it was great . Tracks like The clairvoyant,the trooper,virus,man on the edge,fear of the dark,hallowed be thy name ,aces high,be quick or be dead,the evil that men do certainly deserved to be here .They are all masterpieces. I dont know how Bring your Daughter to the slaughter ever got here . God knows what he's even talking about. That 's pretty much junk . So is running free . But that's excusable , being on thier first album. Otherwise its a great collection . Rime of the Ancient Mariner ought to have been here . so ought also Wrathchild or Killers or powerslave.

In 1996,Heavy Metal band Iron Maiden while still with third singner Blaze Bayley released this compilation "The Best Of The Beast" their first compilation.It contained 16 songs including a new track "Virus" wich wasn't ainvailable anywere else at the time of release.At the time this was a good compilation but with the years better compilation and Greatest Hits albums with double discs,more songs and in some cases a DVD included arrived making this one "just another compilation".This greatest hits album includes classics such as "Run To The Hills","The Trooper" and "Aces High" and the selection of songs was decent for the time and it does contain an unreleased song,but even for a compilation its not much.You can get a much better compilation today with more songs that is worth getting over this and that would be much better.

The tarcklist is as mentionned above good,but it skips the entire Paul Di'Anno era wich is in my opinion very good and at least worth some space on this compilation.Blaze gets 2 songs on the album wich are the excellent "Man On The Edge"(i think the 11 minutes "Sign Of The Cross" would have been good as well but this song being shorter and the fact that you have limited time on a disc,its understandable)from "The X Factor" and the second is the unreleased track "Virus" wich is also very good for a Blaze song if you like him and is worth mentionning.But the compilation is mostly Bruce Dickinson material as 14 out of 16 tracks are from his era and that is quite understandable as that is definatly the best era of Maiden no doubt about it!

Overral to make a long story short,this compilation is not really worth it unless you want to hear "Virus" or if you are a completist who wants everything even the compilations albums.There is a better compilation at a higher price but worth it instead of this,"The Essential Iron Maiden" wich is a double disc,27 songs and is just a better value overral.This is an old compilation that seems to get worse each year and besides i already own most if not all of this material so to me its not great and if you compare it its not worth more than 3 stars wich is my rating.

You can't ask for more classics on one cd. Best of the beast has it all. However i recommend you buy it somehwere else. I purchased it from amazon and the cd came 3 weeks late