Session 7 - The Book Of Souls

Session 7 - 04/09/2015

Maiden and beers
We will return
Blog posts won’t write themselves
At any speed

After writing up the single session in record time I was full of good intentions to do the same for the album release. Six weeks later I started to write up the session and now it is well into the new year. I intend on finishing this write up as well as session 8 (even if we are slow on the write ups we have no trouble continuing the sessions).
I again have scrawled notes and my memory to go on.

A lot has happened in this time. Iron Maiden have announced a lot of tour dates, and Black Sabbath have also announced tour dates.

Getting A Copy On The Day

Initially I had planned on pre-ordering copies from local record stores so I could pick them up on release day. This didn’t work out, but both stores did return my calls - albeit closer to release date than I would have preferred.

Terry had pre-ordered the triple LP and the book CD versions of the album from JB HiFi. I had pre-ordered my copies from Mighty Ape.

Terry, Vicky (my partner) and I had all taken leave and everything was looking good. The day before the release things started to unravel. I had not received a shipping notice from Mighty Ape. This should have been okay as Terry’s copies were due in at JB HiFi so all would be well.

The morning of the release day I contacted Mighty Ape who had not received stock but said they would ship the order as soon as possible.
We met up at a local cafe for breakfast before heading into to town to check the status of the orders from JB HiFi. Terry then mentioned that JB would contact him when his order was in and he had not been contacted yet.

We headed in anyway, with no sign of the (cross) albums at JB HiFi. We hung around for a while just in case, but after an hour or so I decided to call the local record stores which I had contacted initially.
Rough Peel Music had the LP and CD in stock, so we walked across town to secure the LP set.

Finally we had the album. Terry and I babbled a bit to the clerk who looked either lackadaisical or completely despondent about our story of securing a copy on release day.

With the album in hand we headed back to the car and onwards to my place for Session 7.

As soon as we were in the door Terry checked his phone, there was a text message from JB HiFi that had arrived around 10 minutes after we had left the store. The copies had arrived, we jumped back in the car to pick up Terry’s albums.
It turns out they had not received their full order and only his LP set was ready to pick up.

Once home for the second time I contacted Mighty Ape and asked if the stock was in yet, and if it arrived could it be delivered today. They confirmed they were still waiting on stock and we had missed the same day delivery window. Mighty Ape helpfully cancelled my LP order and placed the CD order onto priority shipping so it would arrive the next day once stock had arrived.

Terry - “after listening to ‘final frontier’ we were cautiously optimistic about the new album. thinking that it would likely be OK but might not be anything special - although we had both enjoyed ‘speed of light’.”

The Book Of Souls

1:48 P.M. Terry and I each opened our copies of The Book Of Souls. This is a really nice LP set with the triple gate fold, simple but striking cover that works on smaller media and really shines on the LP.
Opening the gatefold presents you with the more typical colourful artwork associated with the Irons and this one doesn’t let us down.

We kicked of side 1 with a Saw Mill - Pale Ale.

2:03 P.M. Side 2
2:24 P.M. Side 3
2:45 P.M. Side 4 We moved onto side 4 with a vertical tasting of Digital Pale Ale by Yeasty Boys.
This tasting consisted of the old, the new, and our own clone of Digital Pale Ale which is called Fingered. Digital Pale ale was released as an open source beer and the QR code on the side of the bottle will take you to the recipe. Recently they changed the recipe - Terry and I had brewed a clone of the original recipe at the Occasional Brewer. All three beers came across as well-balanced with a good creamy head, The old recipe beer had suffered a little with age and had started to develop oxidised and Marmite-y flavours. Fingered had the most hop flavours and aroma, but was also the freshest. Terry and I were very excited that a beer we had brewed was holding its own against the original.

Things were ticking along nicely at this point. We were enjoying the beer and the new album, so I completely forgot to record the time of sides 5 and 6.

Terry gave the album a first listen 8/10 and I gave it a 7.5/10 - we both agreed this could go up with further listens.

X Factor

3:33 P.M. Whoops the tape needed rewinding.
3:36 P.M. Side A
4:11 P.M. Side B
4:18 P.M. ParrotDog - Dead Canary

Terry - “x-factor was definitely much better than it was given credit for at the time. some great songs although very downbeat by maiden standards.”

ED Hunter

At the end of X Factor I started to set up for the ED Hunter game and best of CD. I in my usual fashion was not as organised as I thought. Even though I had tested the game and made sure it worked on the Laptop and tested the Laptop on the T.V., I had not checked that the game would run using the T.V. with the Laptop.
Twenty Minutes later I had given up on trying to get my old Pentium laptop working on the TV with the game (it changes resolutions and this confused my T.V.). We decided to play the game on the Laptop screen instead.

5:07 P.M. My notes are a little garbled around here, I am pretty sure we listened to CD 1 from ED Hunter while attempting to play the ED Hunter game and drinking an Epic - Pale Ale. The game does play some Iron Maiden tracks while progressing through but this can be turned off just leaving the sound effects turned on.

This CD/Game was released a year after Futureal and was released as Blaze Bailey was leaving and Bruce was re-joining, this explains the track list on the album which had been fan selected from their website.

ED Hunter had been their second attempt producing a game. The first attempt had been named Melt and advertised on the front of the Best Of The Beast box sets. Melt was cancelled a year or so into its development.
ED Hunter is a rail shooter, I remember playing at the time of release and we didn’t think much of it back then. It really hasn’t aged well. Maybe if it had been released as an arcade machine with light guns along the lines of House Of The Dead it would have made more sense.

5:25 P.M. My CD copy of The Book Of Souls had shipped!

We carried on playing ED Hunter and got as far as we could in the game.

6:21 We listened to the second CD of the best of and started to play the Speed Of Light game while drinking a Panhead - Super Charger APA. This is a very nice APA and the Speed Of Light game is more enjoyable than ED Hunter, just a fun web browser based platform game.

The Book Of Souls - Second Listen

6:57 P.M. Side 1, We started to listen to Terry’s copy of the LP.
7:06 P.M. Kereru - Hop To It Pale Ale
7:10 P.M. Side 2
7:33 P.M. Side 3 - I have a cryptic note saying “Beer more malt” I can only assume I meant this beer had more malt character than the previous pale ales in this session.
7:49 P.M. Side 4
7:51 P.M. Black Dog - Kiwi Unleashed
8:05 P.M. Side 5
8:18 P.M. Side 6
8:35 P.M. Called

The Tally Of The Day

Listened To

The Book Of Souls
X Factor
ED Hunter
The Book Of Souls

Imbibed

Saw Mill - Pale Ale
Yeasty Boys - Digital Pale Ale (Original)
Yeasty Boys - Digital Pale Ale (New)
TnNT - Fingered
ParrotDog - Dead Canary
Epic - Pale Ale
Panhead - Super Charger APA
Kereru - Hop To It Pale Ale
Black Dog - Kiwi Unleashed

Aftermath

Steve Harris - British Lion

Following on with the Iron Maiden related aftermath we listened to Steve Harris - British Lion and drank a Garagista IPA - Garage Project.

Terry - “I thought that British Lion should have been released back in the 90s as sounded very much of that time. But it was solid and really happy that Steve is exploring new things whilst still keeping Maiden pumping.”