Iron Maiden - Iron Maiden (2015 iTunes Remaster)

Genre - Heavy Metal / NWoBHM

Label - Parlophone Records (BMG/INgrooves Music Group for the USA)

 

Track listing:

 

01 - Prowler
02 - Remember Tomorrow
03 - Running Free
04 - Phantom Of The Opera
05 - Transylvania
06 - Strange World
07 - Charlotte The Harlot
08 - Iron Maiden
 

Parlophone Records (BMG/INgrooves Music Group for the USA) have released nineteen IRON MAIDEN catalog albums which have been Remastered for iTunes, encoded from 24-bit / 96 khz high resolution masters. All these albums have been remastered with iTunes in mind, delivering the music to listeners exactly the way the artist and recording engineer intended.
These are brand new 2015 remasters from their original analog sources, exclusively produced for iTunes.
Now these remasters are absolutely brilliant, you can hear everything, and I mean everything. Its easy to distinguish between the twin guitar attack, whereas in past mixes they have blurred together at times. Everything is crystal clear, giving the album a, dare I say it, almost contemporary feel. Its great to hear classics like 'Prowler', 'Running Free', 'Charlotte The Harlot' and 'Remember Tomorrow', being given a new lease of life.
Iron Maiden's founder member Steve Harris comments about this superior mastering technique: "The Remastering for iTunes procedure allows the listener to experience the music as close as possible to the way the artist intended it to be heard. So, of course, I was very keen for the Iron Maiden albums to be mastered in this way.
The records have been available digitally before, when this medium first became a platform for music distribution, but were mastered with CDs in mind. The iTunes process involves a different approach and it's great to finally deliver the music to our fans in as close to a pure and accurate sound as we could possibly achieve."
"For example, as most people know, I was never really happy with the sound on the first Maiden album, but listening to it now, the guitars are louder, the drums more substantial and the overall tone is so very much improved, in my opinion.
Tony Newton and Ade Emsley, who worked closely with me on the project, did a terrific job recapturing everything from the original masters, and together we've re- mastered them all digitally and I'm really happy with the results."
Tony Newton adds: "The process started with locating all of the original album mix tapes (or whichever format they were mixed to). Then the choice of analogue to digital convertor was chosen for the most accurate capture to make it as close as possible to the sound of the mix as it was intended by the band.
When a lot of these tapes were last captured it was in the 1980s, early days of digital and only 44.1khz/16bit files were possible. On top of this, the new A/D convertors are far superior now, and, of course, it is possible to produce files of far higher resolution.
The result of this is that the songs now sound more defined with added depth and warmth.

I know that many fans get irritated with the constant re-releases and remasters that many of the bigger bands put out, but this is one set that really is worth having!

Rating - 10/10