LIVE AFTER DEATH

What do you listen to live albums for? Do you just want to hear a very similar rendition of a band's studio songs in a live context, or do you want to hear a different side of the material in its translation from the studio to the stage?

If you are after the former, the Live After Death is perfect: Iron Maiden not only hadn't released a bad album up to this point, they'd hardly even recorded a bad *song*, and this setlist is absolutely stellar.

If you want the latter, though - and that's the camp I'm in - then this will sound an awful lot like the studio albums you no doubt already on, with some overloud crowd noise on top if it. It's interesting hearing Bruce perform Phantom of the Opera - perhaps the one song from the Paul Di'Anno era which deserves Bruce's operatic treatment the most - but otherwise this is going to offer few surprises.