SOMEWHERE IN HUNGARY – Tribute To Iron Maiden Part 1

Attention Iron Maiden freaks! This album is for ya! I know there’s been a lot of Maiden tribute CDs released during the last couple of years (the last one came out just a few months ago on Nuclear Blast), but this one is special and worth to check out.

Somewhere in Hungary as its title says features Metal bands from Hungary paying tribute to one of the greatest Metal combos ever. I hear now you’re saying “Ah, Hungarian bands, who fuckin’ cares?!”, but listen: there are a couple of internationally known bands like Stonehenge that already have a successful album out and Nemesis who just signed a two album deal with the Laser’s Edge label. The idea of this album came from founding member of Iron Maidnem (translate as “Almost” Iron), which is a Hungarian Iron Maiden cover band. They are pretty popular in their home country and after doing many successful live shows they just thought it would be time to record some of those covers. And they managed to do that in great fashion as the final result became a tribute album. They start the album off with a great cover of “Powerslave” and do one more (“Hallowed Be Thy Name”) of the regular tracklist. There are a couple of hidden bonus tracks by Iron Maidnem too. Without any doubts these are the best songs on the album, but it’s no surprise bearing in mind that they are a tribute band.

Other great cover comes from Perfect Symmetry who made their own version of “The Evil That Men Do” and the song ended up sounding like a Perfect Symmetry one without losing the values of the original. Nemesis also did a great job adding a proggy touch to one of my Maiden favorites “To Tame A Land.”

The bands kept their version on the traditional Maiden path, except Stonehenge that made a pretty much different version to the original. They turned “Flash of the Blade” into a heavy Prog Metal song and unless you’re told you won’t even recognize the original. Well, of course there are also some weak covers on this album, but it’s pretty much up to the standard of the recently released other Maiden tribute discs. And this one definitely has the best tribute artwork ever made. Just check out the cover to be sure of that and the booklet is full of some really amazing paintings too. I’m sure you will see this painter guy doing a lot more cover arts on upcoming albums. So, just put this briefly: if you like Iron Maiden and care for tribute albums go out and grab this one.