• AllMyVinyl #161
• Band: Iron Maiden
• Album Title: Nights of the Dead – Legacy of the Beast Live in Mexico City
• Release Date: 20 Nov 2020
• Date purchased: 19 Nov 2020
• Location purchased: Walmart
• Color of vinyl: green, white, & red
• Number of discs: 3
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

Oh look.  A live Iron Maiden album.  This is not exactly a rarity.  There are a metric ton of Iron Maiden live albums.  The only band I can think of that has more live albums is Deep Purple.  I have a few of these live Maiden albums, and I wasn’t exactly looking forward to buying another one.  I of course have the total banger from the 80s – “Live After Death”, and some 90’s eras ones on CD (A Real Live One, A Real Dead One).  So I wasn’t exactly going “I need another one of those”.  But this one got my attention for two main reasons.

First was that it came out about six months after I bought a record player.  During covid lockdowns I got back into vinyl, and when Maiden announced a NEW live album, that got my attention.  It actually remains my only live Maiden on vinyl in 2026, so I’m pretty happy with this one.  More on the WHY of that as we go.

Second was the packaging.  It’s a triple vinyl with a total of 17 songs spread out over six sides.  Now, I don’t know if it was BMG’s choice, or the bloke they hired to do art direction, or Maiden themselves, but I was QUITE taken by the fact that each of the three platters were colored differently – one for each of the three colors in the Mexican flag.  I ADORED that packaging idea.

So between the two of them, I was sold.  Wanted some live Maiden, they had a new one out, and it looked pretty killer.  To top that, it was a great deal.  At the time it was new, it was a Walmart exclusive (at least in this format anyway).  The price was fantastic.  For a triple vinyl, the total amount paid was $38.95 shipped (and tax). Hard to beat that, because Im seeing new copies of this going for around $100 US right now.  Walmart/Maiden still sell this, but in all black – the colored version was a limited edition.

But then I got it, and the quality was top notch.  A lot of bands put vinyl out with lower quality cardboard for the sleeve, lesser vinyl discs – not Maiden.  The overall package has a quality feel.  The outer sleeve is a trifold, made of far better quality cardboard than most of these are.  Each of the discs are higher quality vinyl – have some heft to them – they don’t have the “old 70’s vinyl wobble” to them.  The paper sleeves each of the discs reside in aren’t just the thin white paper a lot of vinyls are distributed in.  Each of them are high gloss printed material.   In fact, the entire package is crammed with artwork, text, stories, pictures..  Whoever designed this package deserves a two thumbs up as it’s supremely high quality from start to finish.  No aspect of this package feels like some rushed piece of crap just to get another live album out there.  Kudos to the team that did this – one of the better packages I’ve bought – either in the past or in modern times.

A little dive into my personal Iron Maiden history.  When I got into them originally, Killers was still the new Maiden album.  Bruce had been announced, but Number wasn’t released yet. I’ve been a Maiden fan since that time, but oddly, I never saw them live in the 80’s – a bit of a regret.  I also missed the entire Blaze Bayley era live in the 90’s (a bigger regret).  I finally got around to seeing them live in 2000 on the tour where Bruce returned. I was overjoyed they continued to play the Bayley era material with Bruce.  Then jump forward another 19 years, my friend Jim and I went to the tour this live album was recorded in (in Dallas).  We saw the show on 21 Sep 2019, which according to the liner notes on the vinyl was just three gigs and six days away from Maiden recording this in Mexico, so it’s as close as I’m gonna get from being on a Maiden album..  ha!

Doubling back to the notes scattered through this package.  Part of what’s on the vinyl sleeves are some of the blueprints for the stage set.  It was broken up into three parts.  The first one was called “War”, which was the segment with the giant plane over the stage set when they opened.  The second was called “Religion”.   The third was called “Hell”.   Gee, can you guess which of the three was the red from the Mexican flag?  :)   All three of the discs have the same art on the printed area of the discs.  That same art was used on stage as part of the “Religion” part of the stage sets.

Given the setlist for the Dallas show matches the lineup on this album,, and it’s so close in terms of date, I can listen to this album, and see my memories of the show just six days prior.  It’s a great thing to draw from as I listen to the album.  It’s not the same deal as being *AT* the show, but it’s close.

I’m not going to write about every track on this, I will at least put the track listing here and say a few things that popped into my head listening to the album.   The reality here is that I wrote the intro part above while listening to the album, looked into my photos from the Dallas show on this tour for some to use, and chatted with my friend Jim.   When I do these articles, it’s mostly me breaking down individual tracks, but given I view the 2019 show and this live album as kind of an “experience”.  I didn’t want to get into the weeds with musical performances captured on my vinyl.   Kind of tie this together with “memories” and see if I can make someone else feel what I felt.   Probably not, but that’s the intent anyway.  I expect Jim might be the only one I can probably pull real memories to the surface with this article.  ha.  Anyway, here’s the track listing for the album.

Side A:

• Churchhill’s Speech
• Aces High
• Where Eagles Dare
• 2 Minutes to Midnight

Side B:

• The Clansman
• The Trooper
• Revelations

Side C:

• For the Greater Good of God
• The Wicker Man

Side D:

• Sign of the Cross
• Flight of Icarus

Side E:

• Fear of the Dark
• The Number of the Beast
• Iron Maiden

Side F:

• The Evil That Men Do
• Hallowed be Thy Name
• Run to the Hills

Aces High – That was always one of my favorite Maiden tracks.  It opened the setlist here and with a bang.  Maiden’s always good with their visuals on stage, and this opened with a giant bi-plane over top of Maiden on the song.  It just appeared out of nowhere seemingly.  I always wondered how they pulled it off – because to me it was a badass special effect.  There’s a picture of this elsewhere on the page.

The Clansman – Again, overjoyed they’re still playing Bayley era material here (Hello Deep Purple – do Burn dammit!).  One thing that I thought was interesting was before the song started, Bruce talked about the track.  He specifically went out of his way to say “Clansman with a C” – which shows you where we are as a race that you have to say that.  That part of the intro wasn’t on the album – may not have been something said in Mexico, could have been a US thing.  Anyway…. killer track, and I thought Bruce pulled off the identity of the song quite well, given it wasn’t his original vocal choices for it, it was Blaze’s.   They also did “Sign of the Cross” from the Bayley era which I adored.

NOTE: If you’re reading this on my blog, I’ve embedded my own recording of “The Clansman” on the page – which includes a LENGTHY speech by Bruce before the song starts, including the “Clansman with a C” thing I mentioned above.

Fear of the Dark – This is a song I always liked, but it works FAR better as a live track for me than the studio original.  I adore hearing the crowd singing “Fear of the Dark” unprompted.  It just works.   I adore that.  So much so, it’s the only song I went back and played a second time after finishing it on this play today.   “I’ve got a phobia…”

Iron Maiden – Maiden always ends the main part of the setlist with this track.  There’s always some visual thing with Eddie as well. I’ve seen stuff where Eddie’s on stage (bloke in a mask), where he’s been a digital screen projection, an inflatable, or something else.  This show was no different.  They made him look a LOT more devil-ish than usual.  But the song itself is still killer all these years later.  Every singer Maiden’s ever had has sung this.  It was recorded by Paul Di’Anno (RIP), but I’ve heard recordings going all the way back to Paul Day on vocals.  Blaze did this – they all did.  It’s perfection, IMO.  They continued to do it justice.  For a song that’s been played so many times over the decades, it’s lost nothing.  The version on this album backs it up.

To sum up would be to basically repeat the intro, so I will close out with this.  This triple vinyl was one of the best put together, good looking vinyl sets I’ve bought since I got back into vinyl six years ago.  Great value, great memories – it’s a wonderful package, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this today.

There’s a lengthy story in here in materials from Maiden manager Rod Smallwood (dated 1 Jul 2020).  He talks about having to cancel all the 2020 shows due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and when they were hoping to resume the tour in 2021.   In this piece, Smallwood writes “..we hope this live album brings you happy memories of an outstanding fun filled tour, whether you are listening to it on your headphones, still in lockdown, or traveling on your way back to work, or sitting at home with the music coming out your speakers at full metal blast!”

That it did Rod.  That it did.   Up the Fucking Irons!

Two admin notes about this page:

1. All the pictures and video on this page are my own with the exception of the “Tour intro” video, which was an official Iron Maiden video on Youtube.
2. The formal name of the album is “Nights of the Dead: Legacy of the Beast Live in Mexico”.  But that’s a bit unwieldy for WordPress article titles, I just shortened it to “Live in Mexico”.  :)