REVIEWS FROM MY VINYL COLLECTION

Day: December 8, 2021

IRON MAIDEN – Live After Death

Confession time! This is the only Iron Maiden album I own with Bruce Dickinson on vocals. I loved the first two Maiden albums with Dianno on vocals as they were new and had that hard punky edge to them. Funnily enough, I don’t mind Bruce’s solo material though.

This was recorded on the Powerslave tour and Bruce was three albums in to his Maiden career, so there were still quite a lot of Dianno era tunes aired at this point. For someone like me, this a perfect album to buy as it’s an almost best of. Recorded part in London and part in LA, the band were really a tight unit and certainly on fire. My favourite tracks here are the older tracks Obvious and Phantom Of The Opera. I think the two guitar set up works better than the three they have now.

If you’re a Maiden fan you will all ready have this, if not and you want an introduction to the band, then it’s not a bad place to start.

8.5/10 from The Grooveman.

CHEAP TRICK – All Shook Up

I’m not a Cheap Trick collector by any stretch, but I’ve just noticed that I own 15 Cheap Trick albums. Out of those 15, there is only one of those that I would call sub standard, the rest are all great records. This is album number 6 which came after the awesome Dream Police. It’s full of Beatles nuances (as are all their releases) as all the band are big Beatles fans.

Not a bad moment on this album and the highlights are many. The opening one two of Stop This Game and Just Got Back are pop rock at its finest. Robin Zander has the ability of sounding like McCartney and Lennon at the same time which is uncanny. Love Comes A Tumblin’ is as rockin’ as this album gets with a stock almost NWOBHM riff. If I was to recommend just one Cheap Trick album for noobs it would be Standing On The Edge, but this is still a good record.

8.5/10 from The Grooveman.