By “The Beast” ofcourse we mean Iron Maiden, the greatest metal band ever. This tribute album contains 17 songs of mostly earlier Maiden-albums: 4 tracks from “Iron Maiden” and “Number Of The Beast”, 3 tracks from “Killers” and “Piece Of Mind”, 2 tracks from “Powerslave” and one from “Somewhere In Time”. Although most bands have been inspired by the older work of Iron Maiden, their repertoire didn’t end at “Somewhere In Time”, six full length albums followed, therefore it’s not a complete tribute. Bands varying from Steel Prophet to Cradle Of Filth and from Six Feet Under to Sinergy perform “Maiden” songs in their own style. Although I hoped for something else, most bands just copied the original track with different vocals. After listening to it for a few times , only Tierra Santa made a completely new song out of “Flight Of Icarus”, making it nearly a rock ballad.

Iced Earth’s version of “Transylvania” can also be found on the latest album of this band, entitled “Horror Show”. This is also the case for Therion’s version of “Children Of The Damned”, which is present on one of their earlier albums. No new material in these cases. The base player from Darkane isn’t capable of playing the bass solo of “Powerslave”, so he doesn’t play the solo at all. The always terrible vocals from Gravedigger mess up “Running Free”, and Disbelief completely destroys the mood with “Stranger In A Strange Land”. It’s entertaining to hear “Wrathchild” in a death metal grunt version, but most Maiden-fans would probably prefer the original. This will very likely be the case for the rest of the songs on this album as well (some more than others). Nice to download from the internet.