817. Various Artists / Maiden Heaven: A Tribute to Iron Maiden. 2008. 2.5/5

A tribute album, especially to a band that is so highly respected and loved through out the world, is a very touchy/feely subject to go into. It's a great thing that so many bands have been influenced over the years by another band. Especially bands from so wide a sphere of music. But when you have a band that is as huge as Iron Maiden is, and a band whose musicians are all thought of as some of the best in the world in what they do, can you honestly do a tribute album that will actually be worthy of the material that band has produced? And, to be honest, if you can't why would you do it?! OK sure, this was done by Kerrang! magazine, and they wanted to sell magazines, but there are at least a number of bands here who should have thought twice before accepting the invitation to contribute to this album.

Black Tide's cover of "Prowler", which starts the album, is fine. A good copy. Almost a perfect copy. Which somewhat defeats the purpose of doing it in the first place. But that would be unfair, given some of what follows. It may not be spectacular, but it doesn't do any damage to the legacy of the original. Metallica's cover of "Remember Tomorrow" is mixed with reverence to the original while still putting enough of Metallica into it to cast it away from the Maiden version. James sings this really well too, whilst the musicianship is top class. Quite probably the best version on this album. Avenged Sevenfold's version of "Flash of the Blade" is much like Black Tide's cover song. Musically it follows the original song almost perfectly. But in doing so, it doesn't have any individuality attached to it, and vocally it does come across a little flat. It's not a tragedy, but it is rather dull. Glamour of the Kill do their version of "2 Minutes to Midnight", which gives us a different mix with a psuedo-electronica undertone and singing in a different register as well. Kudos for changing up the song to make it a little individualistic, but again it comes across as a little dull. Coheed & Cambria took on the tough task to cover "The Trooper", and again, it follows the basic path of the original song, but just can't match it for intensity and excitement and drive.
DevilDriver's cover of "Wasted Years" is a travesty. Seriously, as much as everything is important in a song, "Wasted Years" is pretty much carried by Bruce Dickinson's vocals, and if you can't generate those kind of vocals, you shouldn't be attempting this song. Sorry to DevilDriver fans, but this doesn't work at all well. The version of "Run to the Hills" by Sign most certainly changes up the original, almost becoming a pop song than the charging metal leader it has always been. Again, personal taste will decide how much you enjoy it. Dream Theater's choice of covering the legendary "To Tame a Land" is to be applauded, but the fact that the keyboards replace one of the guitars throughout the song means that some of the power of the song is lost through the declining grunt the dual guitars give the song. The piano driven, softer and slower treatment of "Caught Somewhere in Time" by Medina Lake isn't really in my style of things, but I enjoyed the fact that they at least made an effort to impose their own imprint on the song. Gallows make a decent effort of turning "Wrathchild" into a punk song, which by definition isn't such a long bow to draw. Fightstar then drag out a fairly standard version of "Fear of the Dark" that fails to excite on any level (but that may also be because of my boredom with the song itself).
Machine Head take on the legendary "Hallowed Be Thy Name", and do not disappoint, and while they do not stray too far from the template they still bring the energy that the song emits and carry it throughout. Terrific. Trivium take on "Iron Maiden" with gusto. Year Long Disaster do a note-for-note translation of "Running Free" before Ghostlines do an interesting version of "Brave New World" to finish off the album.

So where does the real problem lie? Well, how do you improve on perfection? In most cases, if you can't make your guitars grunt and squeal, and you can't sing to a certain level, then you will never make these songs sound anywhere near as good as Maiden does. That's why "Remember Tomorrow" and "Hallowed Be Thy Name" are the best songs here, and the others are either just reasonable covers, or less than average covers. As with all covers/tribute albums, you will be able to get a few listens out of this albums, and some reasonable moments. In the long run though, all it will do is reinforce the fact that Iron Maiden can't be fought, and Iron Maiden can't be sought.

Rating:  Unchain the colours before my eyes.  2.5/5