Iron Maiden Offer Free Album… Sort Of

03/12/08 4:30pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

Iron Maiden have joined the growing legion of artists "pulling a Radiohead."

The British metal band will release a new best-of collection, Somewhere Back In Time, on May 13. The album will be available in stores and for free download in Windows Media format from Iron Maiden's website. But wait — there's a catch. If you download it, you'll be able to listen to the album three times before the download expires. Once you've hit play thrice, you'll be asked whether you'd like to purchase the entire album in another download.

Somewhere Back In Time contains 15 tracks, 12 of which are from the band's studio albums released between 1980 and 1989, with three tracks that were recorded live.

According to Iron Maiden's manager Rob Smallwood, many people who have attended the band's most recent shows on the Somewhere Back In Time world tour — which has hit cities like Mumbai, India and Bogota, Colombia — are not as familiar with the band's earlier albums. He says Somewhere Back In Time is being marketed towards them as an introduction.

"Many of our fans weren't even born when the original albums were first released, although amazingly they seem to know all the lyrics when they sing along with the band at our concerts!" Smallwood says.

"We also recognize that 'albums' as such have become unfashionable to many over recent years with TV-generated pop artists stringing a couple of 'hit' singles together with filler tracks and releasing them as a quick fill album which disappoints and quickly becomes dated."

In other Iron Maiden-related news, frontman Bruce Dickinson recently co-wrote the screenplay for Chemical Wedding with Julian Doyle, who has worked in various roles on films like Brazil and Monty Python And The Holy Grail. The film is a "supernatural thriller" (surprise, surprise) about British occultist Aleister Crowley which stars (bizarrely) Simon Callow (Amadeus, Four Weddings And A Funeral, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls) and is directed by Doyle. Callow plays a Cambridge University professor who is reincarnated as Crowley and causes complete chaos across the Cambridge campus. The film will be launched at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17.

In the meantime, if you need your Iron Maiden fix before Somewhere Back In Time is released, you can catch the band when they play Toronto's Air Canada Centre on March 16. The tour marks the end of the first leg of the Somewhere Back In Time tour. It will pick up again in May and will run through August. The second leg will feature shows in the United States and Europe.

Here are the tracks on Somewhere Back In Time:

"Churchill Speech"
"Aces High"
"2 Minutes To Midnight"
"The Trooper"
"Wasted Years"
"Children Of The Damned"
"The Number Of The Beast"
"Run To The Hills"
"Phantom Of The Opera" (Live)
"The Evil That Men Do"
"Wrathchild" (Live)
"Can I Play With Madness"
"Powerslave"
"Hallowed Be Thy Name"
"Iron Maiden" (Live)