Released to coincide with the start of Iron Maiden's latest world tour, billed as the Somewhere Back In Time tour, the two disc Live After Death DVD is the second in Maiden's career retrospectives following up 2004's The Early Years effort.

Let's deal with the first DVD first, the legendary Live After Death live shoot. Originally released on VHS back in 1985 this is the first time that this classic concert has been officially released on DVD. The World Slavery Tour which was captured on this shoot arguably saw Maiden at the peak of both their creative and live powers and the whole tour, never mind this one video has gained legendary status for it's length, theatrical stage sets and pure enthralling power of the music.

What you get on the DVD is the exactly the same show as was on the video but re-mastered and complete with a Kevin Shirley 5.1 mix to compliment the original Martin Birch soundtrack. Now Birch's soundtrack was good but what Shirley has achieved with the 5.1 mix is nothing short of amazing. The vocals are clearer, the instrumentation is clearly defined and the constant crowd noise coming from the speakers puts you right in the middle of Long Beach Arena back in 1985. It really is that stunning. Now if that was all this DVD was to contain then the score would probably be a lot higher than the 7.5 you see above but the problem lies with the second disc.

Let's start with the live footage. Rock In Rio is fun bur isn't great quality. Culled from TV footage of the show the fifty minute segment includes the likes of Aces High, 2 Minutes To Midnight, The Trooper et al. As a spectacle it is superb, with nigh on quarter of a million people packed into the place it could hardly be anything but. What lets it down is the fact that Maiden don't come across all that well. Dickinson's voice seems particularly ropey and at one point you can clearly hear him having a go at the monitor man due to a lack of onstage sound for him (funny, but actually totally unnecessary). Likewise the fact that the band were obviously forced to use Queen's lighting rig (Queen headlined the show) doesn't help the atmospherics either, but it's a nice record of a unique event and a worthy inclusion.

The same can be said for the Live Behind The Iron Curtain feature which capture's Maiden right at the start of the tour and sees the band take in the then Eastern Block countries for the first time. Although previously released on VHS also again it's nice to have on DVD. The 'Ello Texas and gallery features are something or nothing, once you've seen them once then that's all you really need to see but the main gripe here is the History Of Iron Maiden Part II.

The first DVD is this series, and the tour which accompanied it, dealt exclusively with the first four Iron Maiden albums. The two gelled perfectly, each complimenting the other so if you saw the show and bought the video then the 1975 - 1983 periods were covered in great depth. This time around the tour covers what is generally considered Maiden's "Golden Period", namely Powerslave, Somewhere In Time and Seventh Son of A Seventh Son. If you've seen Nic's review of the Perth show then you'll know that songs from all three albums are featured heavily in the set. Why then does the history contained here only deal with the making of Powerslave and that album's tour. Where are the stories surrounding Donington '88, the band's use of guitar synthesizers for the first time on S.I.T, Dickinson's disillusionment with that album and even the Maiden England video shoot from Seventh Tour of A Seventh Tour.

Now I may be doing the band a disservice and the plan may be to bring out a second DVD covering these events but that would mean double the cost for the punter and somehow that doesn't seem fair when there was the ability to include it all here on one release. One can only hope though that the time frame covering these two albums does find it's way onto DVD at some point because both are an integral part in Maiden's history and to overlook them completely would be disingenuous. In the meantime purely for the Live After Death show this is still a must by release for metal fans everywhere.