Maiden.2018

‘When we approach a composer, we like to immerse ourselves in his or her early works, in order to understand the evolution of the person behind the score.'

One of the truly iconic works in the repertoire for string quartet, Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden is named after the song which has lent its theme to the second movement. At the end of Matthias Claudius’s poem, which Schubert had set as a 20-year-old in 1817, Death cradles the Maiden in his bony embrace. And her fear, in the first verse, of encountering his tomb-cold touch is mirrored by his desire for her in the second. In Schubert’s life time, death was a constant presence in everyday life and even a young person like himself would have encountered it at close quarters – in fact, his own mother had passed away when he was only 15.

Parlophone Records (BMG in the US) will continue their reissues series of the IRON MAIDEN catalogue with The Studio Collection – Remastered, covering the band’s sixteen-strong studio albums across their career to date. Following on from 2014/2017’s black vinyl releases and 2015’s Mastered for iTunes project, The Studio Collection – Remastered will be released on the Digipak CD format, with the track listing matching the original UK releases. The recordings are taken from the same remasters as the 2015 hi-res digital releases.

And Justice for None is the upcoming seventh studio album by American heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch. It is set to be released on May 18, 2018. The band had already completed recording of the album by December 31, 2016, however due to ongoing problems with their label Prospect Park, the album was delayed until 2018 after they reached negotiations with the label. After negotiations were reached in late 2017, they released the greatest hits compilation A Decade of Destruction and two new songs entitled "Trouble" and a cover of The Offspring song "Gone Away" recorded for the new album were included on the compilation, which will be featured on the deluxe version of the new album, which will also feature a different album cover for the deluxe edition.

Heavy Metal vocalists who find success in a commercially recognized band often use that safety net to branch out into their solo career, and create the art they always dreamed with enough backing support from various high places to get there. A great example of this driven fortitude comes from England-born Blaze Bayley, who originated his success with his band Wolfsbane in the early eighties, and then landed his most commonly-known role where he took on a five-year vocal lead in Iron Maiden – which brought 1995’s The X Factor and 1998’s Virtual XI into the universe.

The double-disc Nights Of The Dead, Legacy Of The Beast: Live in Mexico City was recorded during the band’s three sold out arena shows in the Mexican capital in September 2019 and is a celebration of the legendary British metal band’s Legacy Of The Beast world tour which began in 2018 and will finish next summer in Europe.