Various - A Tribute To The Beast


Year of Release: 2002
Label: Nuclear Blast
Catalog Number: n/a
Format: CD
Total Time: 76:35:00

I'll leave this as a fairly quick review because we're all fairly familiar with Iron Maiden, their history, their ups and downs, and in the case of this album, their influence. Yes, here it is another tribute album coming from the stable that is Nuclear Blast. and we all know it won't be their last.

A Tribute To The Beast is definitely one of the better tribute albums going around, as I thought the last tribute album form the NB stable, A Tribute To Accept Volume II, was pretty weak. This tribute album, like the Accept one, sees the continuing balancing of metal styles and it comes with a total of 16 tracks - 76 minutes in length. Here I'll briefly go through the tracks in order of good, average and the terrible:

Special mention to the following: Children of Bodom ("Aces High" - more comical than anything but really powerful and creative), Cradle of Filth ("Hallowed Be Thy Name" - entrancing and BIG), Grave Digger ("Running Free" - Chris' vocals make this one a winner), Sonata Arctica ("Die With Your Boots On" - different in that pop/power metal kind of way, with vocalist Tony Kakko in one of his best performances), Opeth ("Remember Tomorrow" - very professional and involving), Sinergy ("The Number Of The Beast" - Kim actually sounds like Bruce Dickinson!), Tierra Santa ("Flight Of Icarus" - who turn the song into a ballad), and Dark Tranquillity ("22, Acacia Avenue" - just brilliant).

Middle Ground material includes: Rage ("The Trooper" - nice representation with some differences and Peavy sounding heavier than he has in years), Burden of Grief ("Prowler" - great song but a bit of a dry band), Iced Earth ("Transylvania" - instrumental; nuff said ;-P), Disbelief ("Stranger In A Strange Land") and Darkane ("Powerslave").

Special dud medallions go out to the following: Steel Prophet ("Ides Of March"/"Purgatory" - boring; for a band that lives off imitating Maiden they just don't cut it vocally), Therion ("Children Of The Damned" - it just sounds wrong), and Six Feet Under ("Wrathchild" - it's different, but I think it's just that I don't like that style of metal).

So there you have it. Mainly above average to good and a nice cross-section of Maiden songs. I don't know if I can give this one a rating or not because it will probably come down to personal taste on what your thoughts on the selected songs are and of the bands presented. Cheers!

[This review originally appeared November 2002 at the ProgPower Online review site -ed.]


Tracklisting:
The Ides Of March/Purgatory (Steel Prophet) / Aces High (Children Of Bodom) / The Trooper (Rage) / Hallowed Be Thy Name (Cradle Of Filth) / Running Free (Grave Digger) / Prowler (Burden Of Grief) / Die With Your Boots On (Sonata Arctica) / Children Of The Damned (Therion) / Transylvania (Iced Earth) / Remember Tomorrow (Opeth) / The Number Of The Beast (Sinergy) / Stranger In A Strange Land (Disbelief) / Flight Of Icarus (Tierra Santa) / 22 Acacia Avenue (Dark Tranquillity) / Wrathchild (Six Feet Under) / Powerslave (Darkane)

Musicians:


Discography:


Genre: Various Genres

Origin VA

Added: March 29th 2005
Reviewer: Gary Carson
Score:
Artist website:
Hits: 2096
Language: english

  

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