In my humble opinion, music is a lot like football. If you play it simple you can create magic and score goals. Many times IRON MAIDEN have been accused that their music is simple and boring, but they created a unique sound and a whole new musical genre that carries their name. Maiden Heaven is a collection that features various bands covering tracks from IRON MAIDEN's legendary career; the CD has been given away free with Kerrang!'s issue #1219.

Kerrang Magazine managed to include performances from bands like METALLICA, MACHINE HEAD, TRIVIUM, DREAM THEATER and YEAR LONG DISASTER, a fact that makes this effort even more interesting.

Of course, the appearance of Remember Tomorrow performed by METALLICA is the number-one subject and attracts the fanatic METALLICA fan base. METALLICA tried to give a Creeping Death intro to this song, a thing that just doesn't fit musically. Remember Tomorrow is a song that hunted METALLICA for a long time as they covered it live in many occasions, but in Maiden Heaven METALLICA couldn't deliver, maybe because their mind is more focused on their new album than to make a decent MAIDEN cover, who knows? On the other hand, I have to agree with Lars Urlich that said: IRON MAIDEN are 10% cooler than every other band. From their relationship with their fans, to their album covers to their stages, to their live presentation, to their photos - whatever they did was always cooler than what everyone else did! I have always had an incredible amount of respect and admiration for them. We played Remember Tomorrow as it was basically the blueprint for songs like Fade To Black and Welcome Home (Sanitarium), and some of the more epic ballady type of songs that METALLICA had done later. Right on, Mr. Lars!

But the Maiden Heaven tracklist includes some good tranformations of IRON MAIDEN epics, like the HC/Punk cover of Wrathchild by GALLOWS, the totally changed melody of Run To The Hills from SIGN (honestly they gave a new interest to this MAIDEN hymn). DREAM THEATER made a decent cover of Too Tame A Land (I didn't like the fake MIDI sitar sound), GHOSTLINES gave a mellow acoustic ballad feel to Brave New World and AVENGED SEVENFOLD did well on the instrumental - only - part of Flash Of The Blade.

Keep away from DEVILDRIVER's cover of Wasted Years and Caught Somewhere In Time by MADINA LAKE (serioucly guys, not cool!).

With a 30-year-old history in their backs,  IRON MAIDEN is currently on the Somewhere Back In Time world tour, their biggest tour ever, and they are preparing the 15th MAIDEN studio album. Up the Irons!