UMUR "Nights of the Dead, Legacy of the Beast: Live in Mexico City" is a live double album release by UK heavy metal act Iron Maiden. The album was released through Parlophone Records in November 2020. The material featured on the album was recorded on 27th, 29th and 30th of September 2019 in Mexico City, during the Legacy of the Beast World Tour. The tour wasn´t in support of a particular album, as the band had wrapped up The Book of Souls World Tour in 2017, but rather in support of, or maybe more correctly accompanying the "Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast" mobile game. This meant that the band played quite a few legacy tracks on the tour and even revived a couple of older tracks they hadn´t played in years.

So while it´s no surprise to see that the tracklist includes tracks like "Aces High", "2 Minutes to Midnight", and "Hallowed Be Thy Name", it´s a bit more surprising to see tracks like "Where Eagles Dare" and "Flight of Icarus" included. The latter hadn´t been played by Iron Maiden since the tour supporting "Somewhere in Time (1986)". What´s even more suprising to me is the inclusion of the two Blaze Bayley-era tracks "Sign of the Cross" and "The Clansman". The last surprise on the tracklist is "For the Greater Good of God" from "A Matter of Life and Death (2006)". It´s not as such a surprise that the track is included, but it´s just the first recorded live version to be released of the song. So it´s a well balanced tracklist with both great legacy tracks, and a few more deep cuts to spice things up, and the combination works great on "Nights of the Dead, Legacy of the Beast: Live in Mexico City".

The sound production is not surprisingly of a high quality featuring a powerful and organic sound, and audience responses/noises when that is called for. While this is certainly a hi-fi quality live production, you´re never in doubt that it´s a live release, and that´s how the best live productions usually work. The band are in fine form too and deliver the music with great skill and conviction. I think Bruce Dickinson struggles slightly on the faster-paced tracks, but other than that slight issue his performance here is as commanding as ever. It´s quite frankly amazing how he is able to control his voice and sing the high notes without sounding strained.

Some of the highlights of the album (other than the legacy tracks, which we´ve all heard a thousand times before on preceding live albums), are "Sign of the Cross" and "The Clansman". I realise Iron Maiden have released live versions of the two songs featuring Dickinson on some of the preceding live albums, but every time I hear those songs with him on vocals, I´m in awe of how great those tracks actually are, with a more unique vocalist performing them. Upon conclusion "Nights of the Dead, Legacy of the Beast: Live in Mexico City" is yet another high quality live album release by Iron Maiden to help make the waiting time before the band release a new studio album more bearable for the fans. It´s not the most necessary release in their discography, but it´s greatly entertaining and high quality release through and through. A 4 star (80%) rating is deserved.

Pekka There are two viewpoints for looking at the way Iron Maiden operates nowadays, of which one is to see them as an endlessly cashgrabbing nostalgia act milking the fans with a live release after another. This is of course wrong since the other, better, opinion is that if there's no live release from every tour, there's not enough! Plus they've had a continuous cycle of album tour -> hits tour -> album tour -> hits tour going on since 98, so it's not a thing they started doing in their old days.

So for me, being a semi-obsessive semi-diehard, every live release is a reason for celebration. Frankly I did not see this one coming since apart from Flight 666 they have not done any official releases from the retrospective tours despite some of them containing very strong era-specific themes that people like me would love to have. Extremely loosely based on a Maiden themed mobile game Legacy of the Beast this tour fleshes out the regular hit list with deep cuts from different points in the past, even including the Blaze era.

I saw the show in Helsinki and absolutely loved it. The stage presentation with the airborne spitfires and stained glass cathedrals was the most stunning I'd ever seen them do, and the setlist is indeed a treat. But one thing I noticed clearly was that, finally, age was starting to catch up with them. It just so happens that the person setting the tempo and keeping the beat is also the oldest member of the band, and Nicko McBrain's performance was regrettably sloppy with many a fill going sorta almost like it should but stumbling halfway.

Taken by itself the all the deficiencies of this release are not too obvious, but I happened to listen to Nights of the Dead right after the brilliant Flight 666 the other day, and compared to that one the tempos seem a bit sluggish in places, band performance less than airtight, bass sound is thin, guitars pretty quiet and Bruce, while hitting the notes, is laboring like hell. You get used to the mix after a few songs, but in comparison to the older release the difference was very obvious. One thing is the audience noise which sounds like some weird synthetic din, and as this release was a covid-19 stopgap it might even be possible that they never recorded the audience properly in the first place and had to manufacture something in its place.

The pure golden setlist takes this one very far, but the performance and production keep it from reaching its full potential. For the first time I'm a bit concerned about the future of Iron Maiden.