IRON MAIDEN have announced two anniversary releases, and between them they cover a lot of ground: one album turning forty, and the band's first thirteen years turning fifty.
The first is "Somewhere In Time". The 1986 record — the one that put synthesised guitars and Derek Riggs's cyberpunk Eddie in front of a fanbase that had just come off "Powerslave" — gets a fortieth-anniversary pressing on limited-edition oxblood vinyl, using the 2015 remaster. An exclusive Amazon variant adds a full sleeve poster.
The second is bigger. "The 50th Anniversary Studio Album Collection, Part One: 1980 – 1992" arrives in December: nine studio albums on coloured vinyl, housed in a purpose-designed artwork box with an anniversary poster. It runs "Iron Maiden" on red and gold, "Killers" on red, "The Number Of The Beast" on silver, "Piece Of Mind" on yellow, "Powerslave" on gold, "Somewhere In Time" on oxblood, "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son" on white, "No Prayer For The Dying" on olive, and "Fear Of The Dark" across two LPs on blue and yellow.
The word "Part One" is doing obvious work. This set stops at 1992 — the end of the second Bruce Dickinson era, before Blaze Bayley, before "The X Factor", before the reunion and everything after it. A second volume is the only sensible reading. Outside the United States, the box is an Amazon exclusive.
Both releases land while the band are in the middle of the biggest touring year they have had in some time. The North American leg of "Run For Your Lives" opened on August 29 at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, and MAIDEN headline the Louder Than Life festival in Louisville on September 17.
That tour is also the first extended run with Simon Dawson behind the kit. Nicko McBrain played his last show with the band in December 2024, at the close of "The Future Past Tour", after more than four decades; Dawson, who had already been playing with Steve Harris in BRITISH LION, took the seat. The band have also asked audiences on this run to "severely limit the use of their phone cameras out of respect for the band and their fellow fans" — a request that has drawn a fair amount of comment, and rather more compliance than sceptics expected.
Fifty years on from Harris forming the band in Leyton in 1975, the catalogue is being repackaged in the format it was written for.