CD review PAUL DI’ANNO ‘Hell Over Waltrop – Live in Germany’

This live album belongs to the more unusual ones of its kind. First and foremost the concert, being the base for this release, took place in 2006 in Waltrop, Germany. So why is the release 14 years later.

The concert was part of the Parkfest festival that featured a wider range of sounds, incl. bands like Fury In The Slaughterhouse and even Pop-singer Sidney Youngblood. Ok, that’s special, but not the reason for the long time span between show and release.

At the time producer Thomas Mergler realized that the recordings were not usable due to an error by the monitoring. This killed the idea of a live album, up until here and now.

12 years of technical development enabled Mergler to save the old recordings, leading to a live album that almost wouldn’t have had a chance to crawl out of the dark archives of Metal.

‘Hell Over Waltrop – Live in Germany’ is done without tricks and overdubs. It’s 100% authentic Heavy Metal that features a setlist that of course includes some of the early Iron Maiden-classics. The sound of the album is OK and authentic. Considering the story of creation, the it’s not the very best live sound but it’s actually refreshing to listen to songs like ‘Running Free’ is a basic version, compared with the perfectly done sound of today’s Iron Maiden.

To conclude: ‘Hell Over Waltrop – Live in Germany’ isn’t a ‘must have’ album, but fans of the early Iron Maiden and Paul Di’Anno could complete their collection with this live release.

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