Rip Roaring and Epic: The way a Maiden album should be, October 5, 2003

All Iron Maiden albums from "The Number Of The Beast" to "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son" are absolute classics and timeless masterpieces. I grew up listening to these records, and I know every lyric, every pause, every guitar tone and every tempo change by heart. So, more than sad, I'm really angry to have to say that all the "enhanced" 1998 releases are complete sonic disasters, "loudness war" productions with the audio dynamic range slaughtered by whoever was responsible for doing the remastering. It seems that the idea was to turn all the way up the sound of every single instrument and vocal line with no regard to the equilibrium between them within the music's context. I almost cried in anger when I heard those guitar chords at the start of the song "Moonchild", with the originally carefully distorted tone turned into a mass of just plain annoying, pointless distortion, and all the feeling lost.Every time I get to write about a dear album destroyed by a "loudness war"...

Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son (1988). Iron Maiden's seventh studio album.

I wouldn't give it a 5-star rating because I simply don't give 5-star ratings, unless a work is revolutionary or at least evolutionary in the rock realm.