Somewhere Back In Time: The Best Of 1980-1989 [Import, Best of, Original recording remastered]

Where is Seventh Son of a Seventh Son?

No Maiden greatest hits album could be complete without this masterpiece, but this compilation however is. -1 star for that glaring omission.

Yes I know its a 9+ minute track, maybe this should have been a triple vinyl instead, would had worked out much better to cover the holes.

I was so excited to receive this record, and when it arrived I looked at it in amazement, it is really a piece of art, the cover, the gatefold pictures and lyrics, and then the discs, oh they looked so good and heavy, worth framing and displaying in a fancy room, and then I put side 1 on the turntable, what a let down, first tarck aces high (live), why live?, what's the point, this is a greatest hits album, not that they say anything on the track, just the applause, and the sound is worse than a cassette tape, sound like somone was standing front row with a microphone and recording the concert, track two, minutes 2 midnight, really good sound, so I thought, well one track off it's ok, then my favourite song, the trooper, oh man, I'd rather listen to my 30 years old cassette tape, major let down, after that I stopped listening to the record, I mean, why go to all that trouble with the discs and artwork, at least remaster the songs, like everyone else, Deep purple, AC/DC, Beatles..etc...so sad that it sounds so awfull, now I'll just keep it to look at not play, maybe worth keeping, but I will be looking for a better sound quality best of in the future, not happy with this one.

Iron Maiden should already have a place in your music collection if you're into rock'n'roll, metal or whatever genre you like. If you don't own anything by Maiden you probably shouldn't consider yourself a metalhead, they are essential to the genre. They are one of my favorite bands and are without question one of the most influential bands in rock music. Maiden's prime was definitely during the 1980s, I don't feel like they released a bad album during this decade (but some are obviously better than others) and this compilation Somewhere Back in Time: 1980-89 covers this special time. It was released in 2008 along with the excellent Live After Death DVD(from the World Slavery tour of 1984-85) promoting Maiden's tour which graced the same name of this compilation (oh and as usual with Maiden's artwork I love it the mix of Powerslave with Somewhere In Time looks terrific), Somewhere Back In Time, in which they put emphasis on the classics during this tour.

What's in this compilation? :

First we have 2 songs from their self-titled debut and 1 from Killers with singer Paul Di' Anno sang by Bruce Dickinson on Live After Death. They sound great even if they're not the originals but I just wish that they could have somehow put them here. Then there are 4 songs from The Number of The Beast on this compilation and rightfully so as it's often pointed out as their best album. I'm quite disappointed that they only included The Trooper from Piece of Mind that album was great and there were plenty of songs that could have been selected to be here, Where Eagles Dare, Die With Your Boots On, Flight of Icarus and Revelations weren't good enough? There are 3 songs from Powerslave, one live from Live After Death good representation of one of their strongest albums. Wasted Years was selected from Somewhere In Time but it would have deserved at least another song. 2 songs from Seventh Son of A Seventh Son were chosen. Somehow 14 songs that have pretty much all been used on other greatest hits aren't as effective and get less respect from true fans after the fifth time(Churchill Speech was included as well on Somewhere Back In Time and serves as a great intro but I don't consider it a song)am I the only one who thinks this?

This Greatest hits technically covers the years 1982-1988 as the songs from the first two albums (Iron Maiden 1980 and Killers 1981) were taken from 1984 live and Seventh Son of A Seventh Son was released in 1988 and was their last album of the 1980s. It would have been nice to have the original songs from the Di' Anno because the new fan who buys this will only be able to judge Bruce's interpretation of "his" songs. They selected pretty much the best from the rest, the songs are great. As said before I'm disappointed there is not more from Piece of Mind on here but the rest is terrific. On the bad side, this is Iron Maiden's fifth compilation album and the fact that some of the previous ones are much better doesn't help. The song listing here does not differ greatly from the others and does not give the old fans anything new. It's really for someone who is new to Maiden and doesn't know which greatest hits is best. I'd recommend The Essential Iron Maiden over this as it has two discs, is much more complete and career spawning for a good price, or get The Number of The Beast or Powerslave albums they would make a great introduction as well. It does get one thing right: the idea, it covers the 1980s specifically which was the best era of the band, start with this era.