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Imagine you're in your fifties. A quarter of a century ago you were the vocalist of Iron Maiden. After you get kicked out, you get replaced by the very best metal singer that showed up in the scene since Ronnie James Dio. With Bruce Dickinson Maiden soon becomes the leading and top selling metal group worldwide. You however never got a solo career off the ground, and watching your former band become multi millionaires as you're slowly growing bald and old must pretty much suck.

So what you do?

Paul Dianno's The Classics: The Maiden Years is nothing more than the title suggests: Re-recorded classic Maiden songs. In other words, Dianno's milking it again. And who could blame the man? Even though this is marginally an interesting record, a hand full of Maiden fans are bound to pay money for it. A justification for milking an age old repatoire? I doubt it.

Well okay, so Dianno's voice sounds to be in tact after all these years. The moments he dissapoints are seldom. But wait, what's that rediculous grunt at the beginning of 'Killers'? And during many other songs on this disc... That's even more stupid then blindly re-recording old Maiden songs.

All in all this is a collectors item for people who'd collect anything. It's hardly an added value to your cd stack. Let's be frank, imagine Killswitch Engage becoming bigger than Metallica next year, and Jesse Leech re-recording the first two KsE albums in 2030.

That would be quite a pathetic event, now wouldn't it?

Line Up:
Paul DiAnno
Lea Hart
Billy Liesgang
Pete Jupp

Track Listing:
Wrathchild
Strange World
Charlotte The Harlot
Killers
Prowler
Murders In The Rue Morgue
Running Free
Remember Tomorrow
Phantom Of The Opera
Sanctuary
Women In Uniform
Iron Maiden